Less an insult, but I've been amused by it none the less.

Folding in the passenger side mirror, saying through the window "Well, you obviously don't use it."

I much prefer the shared pavement type

These are my most hated type. Pedestrians wander all over them, often with uncontrollable children and/or dogs.

It's completely inappropiate for me, doing 25mph+ to share a common pathway.

I totally agree. cyclepaths alongside roads need to be sparated from the road by a kerb so cars don't park in them. the painted line is useless and usually disappears where it is needed most – at junctions.

I'm not sure I agree with this either. Kerbs would be seen to prohibit cyclists from using the road where necessary/desireable. And also I don't want to be separated from cars. I want cars to be more aware of cyclists. For this we need to be seen as serious road users.

Where cyclepaths alongside roads are desireable, we need fines in place for cars who park in them – think like double yellow lines. How many drivers do you know that'll park on a double yellow?

Cheap ones are cut from a tube, a sound structure, into something that's it wasn't designed to be. They can crush. Sometimes they're not even flat.

Eh? But all you're using them for is preload – if they are going to crush, surely it's going to be under the initial preload. And surely you shouldn't be putting that much pressure on it, you're only making sure the bearings are properly held together.

I'll be selling a brand new S-Works frame in a couple of months, with forks and chainset, make a cracking 24 solo bike…

Hmm… really now? Would it happen to be a medium?

I have been pondering upgrading my aging Epic for a little while…

… but the more bikes on the road interacting with drivers, the more aware they'll have to be of us.

Completely segregating cyclists from other road traffic isn't a good thing.

My friend is always amused/impressed that my kitchen cupboards contain equal parts kitchen utensils/crockery and bike parts/tools.

Ride.

But fix the tube before you go.

I had a book in the 90s which recommended trying to lay the bike down on its side by skidding the back wheel rather than t-boning a car that pulled out in front of you like that. I'm not sure I much like that idea either, but the author reckoned you would then slow rapidly due to bike and body friction on the road and would have less chance of breaking yourself – although you'd get badly scuffed.

If you have enough time/space to do this, I reckon you've got enough distance to stop/swerve.

Better – skid the back wheel around, bringing you parallel with the car, and fall into the side of it. Crumple zones are great. :)

Hrm.

What would expenses be that aren't housing costs?

Try riding it before changing it around?

Hmm, that's not miles off (okay, it's not exactly on my doorstep either). Might have to pop by.

Do you really mean 11pm?

Weeeeelllll… it was really if we knew people in common (I know one or two of the Edinburgh Uni bike club).

hmm, actually. Started paying attention – you get out much with the Edinburgh uni folk?

(Edit: I'm a bit further out, but have a spare room I could be persuaded to surrender for a bit for not much. Definitely on a friend of friend basis, though.)

Conservatively I think you'll rinse through 3k in 3months of staying/living costs/rent in London.

I dunno, I reckon I can get by on less.
Depends on where you are, and how disciplined you are with your spending, imo.

That ad Simon_g posted looks ideal. Not looking for luxury for 3 months. Also keen to get running, so that could be an option rather than bike commuting.

Just make sure you check the contract lengths – most I've seen run for a minimum of 6 months.

SW London is best I reckon

Being south of the river is always a mistake, though. :)

Hmm, that shouldn't be completely impossible…

How far are you willing to commute in, that's the question?

Oh, and how cheapness is much cheapness?

I'm going to ditto the DIY approach. But mainly because I'm too lazy to make/keep appointments.

I didn't really rate it all that highly, alright for a bit of a laugh though.

40 minutes really isn't that much of a drive, though :)

I am the fastest London Commuter ;O)

Thems fighting words

Oh, and Quinn worked out cheapest for me with my first car (albeit at 23 or 24).

They'll include glass cover if you pay them a bit more, I think.
That said, run it through a few of the myriad of quoting engines (confused, comparethemarket, etc.) that exist to see if anywhere works out better. Different insurers are cheaper for different addresses.

Marko, if Quinn 'do a deal' they're in breach of FSA regulations.

Eh?

You mean Higher Education?

"Where are you now?" is probably a good question.

Bikes are clearly the best way of getting around London, but then you need to factor in how far you and your girlfriend are willing to ride each day, and how you get in/out on off-days.

Hmm, easy access to both Liverpool Street and Paddington will be a bit challenging.

Unless you've tried it, you'd be suprised at how long it takes to get from one side of London to the other during rush hour (or at any other times).

Probably want to be looking at places which go into King's Cross – although getting on the tube there is particularly painful.

As said above, depends a bit on budget – Borehamwood and St. Albans are nice, but you'll find them expensive compared to surrounding area.

Might want to check out Barnet too (although again, pricier than surrounding area) – decent links into King's Cross, and has a tube station which can come in handy.

Wouldn't the point of running discs on a road bike be that you could build more exotic wheels due to the lack of need for braking surface?

Swapping rotating weight for non-rotating weight strikes me as a good idea.

Perl is an okay language, but is spoilt by the culture of developing in it, which is often about writing compact code, using various shortcuts or symbols, and it has loads of wacky syntax that is a nightmare to read, so people often don't write easy to understand code.

That very much depends on the coder in question, and the purpose of said code.
(I'll write code differently for production environments than I will to solve a quick puzzle for myself).

It should be noted that a sufficiently good/bad (take your pick) coder can write obscure code in any language. Perl isn't really any better or worse for it, but it has a poorer reputation.

Perl programmers go for speed and therefore it is often very difficult to read their code if you are a beginner.

Do you really think that Perl coders are so fast with devising code that cutting down the amount of typing they do speeds up the process?

If you're talking code execution speed, then well, you learn when to optimise and when not to.

Perl's a very legible language when written right; one of the problems with this is that as a consequence, it can be fairly illegible when it's not.

The thing people haven't mentioned is CPAN, which is really the core strength of Perl – vast amounts of code written by others, so that you don't have to.

We're going up this weekend, but I think the plan is to be a bit more North Wales :)

I've had some luck using two aerials and a booster, with some precarious perching around the room.

Also, the teeny tiny aerial that came with the tv card included with my laptop – I've no idea how it works, but it seems like a sort of magic.

I bought a jacket from them a few months ago, was fine.

Didn't need to contact them for anything, so can't report how well they deal with issues if/when they arise, but yeah, I gave them money and stuff appeared.

I do seem to have not gotten a hell of a lot of mail over the past 6 months or so.

Lol – no I wasn't. I was simply saying that unfit people tend to push big gears because they find they get out of breath if they spin small gears fast. Fit people can mash big gears if they like, they'll just probably not be as quick as they could be if they trained themselves to spin

We assume you only use the granny ring and 32/34 tooth sprocket, then?

I had one of those Coleman ones.

The fuel line clogs eventually, and it's virtually impossible to find a replacement, and completely impossible to clean effectively, but I feel I had fair useage out of the stove before it did (it got used a lot).

Definitely go for one over one of those butane ones, though. You'll save the money in fuel costs before too long, and petrol stoves are much nicer to use (if a little more fiddly to light).

I'd say it seemed like a pretty reasonable punishment, you can hardly claim the cyclist was faultless, and it doesn't sound like the collision happened at great speed.

Also, it should be noted that it shouldn't be too hard to find a job paying more than 14k. :)

(I believe that we've recently had someone in on a sandwich year for about 20k)

I've no idea what the average is, but I'd say your survivable and livable figures were about right.

You'd have to be fairly careful about where you lived, and where you spent your money, though. Doubt you'd manage to save anything either.

Hope you'd manage to do better for yourself, though! :)

Yeah, sounds like he was just after a fight.

I'll tend to mention to drivers in London when they've done something wrong (the number of taxis that jump red lights and go through pedestrian crossings!), in an attempt to redress the balance of cyclists' reputation, but I'm too lazy to make a big deal of it.

What's the difference between innovations cartridges and other cartridges?

As far as I'm aware they can't force you to car share.
But I don't believe that they're under any obligations to provide you with parking space.

Depends a bit on how hilly it is, and if you're a grinder or a spinner, surely?