Thanks everyone… lots to pick through there. Will find out what her indoors fancies.

Budget… err.. i suppose up to £200. We’re already spending a fair amount on hotel and theatre tickets on Saturday, so probably shouldn’t go ‘epic’!

edit: saying that… I’d be perfectly happy spending £20 if someone has got a recommendation of a cheap eat that shouldn’t be missed!

I bought a load of insulation from here when I did my loft… good service, delivered on their lorry… need to insulate my garage roof soon, so will be getting some more: Seconds and co

I was there a while back and met up with some (local) friends, who took me to the gravity station[/url]. Not what you might call overflowing with atmosphere, but the beer was bloody good.

We’ve got a nest, and it is fine for heating, but doesn’t do hot water.

How do I know if I’m registered or not?

use ipv6 if you want them to be more consistent :)

Tesla Model S ?

looks like it should be driven by this guy:

can I have my 34 seconds back, please?

Thanks slackboy, that’s exactly the sort of thing I’m after

Can it be hooked up to something centrally that holds all my music and movies so if we fancied watching a film in bed we could whilst my lads watched something else in their bedrooms etc.

I use plex to do that.. holds all my music and transcodes it to suit whatever device on the network I fancy watching it on.

On the OP, I’d put Cat 6 everywhere… as many of them as you can manage, all routed back to a central patch panel. Then you can use baluns to adapt them to carry just about any signal you like – hdmi etc, no problem.

Dave

I’ve got a cargo bike (rocky mountain blizzard with an xtracycle) for the nursery run / family trails, and a weeride on my cotic soul.

The cargo bike, with its huge panniers is great for all the clobber I end up having to carry around – changing bags, spare clothes etc. I do about 3 miles to nursery, then carry on for a couple of miles after that to my office. It isn’t the most efficient bike, especially with the big air brake on the back, so I wouldn’t want to do loads more than that every day!

The weeride is good for doing ‘proper’ rides, but even now at 20 months, he bounces around a bit too much on rough stuff to really enjoy it. He loves smooth swoopy things though. The limiting factor though is the fact that riding with him up front makes my knees hurt.

Dave

edit: forgot to say… first had him on the cargo bike (in a yepp seat) at 6 months, and first on the weeride (in chamonix of all places) at 10 months.

another optoma here – hd20 (1080p) for me. Had it about 4 years now, watching a film on average every couple of nights, and the lamp is still going strong. really good picture quality too. Haven’t used it for gaming, so can’t comment on that.

Downsides:
– the fan is on the loud side (but I only really notice it in really quite bits of films, or when someone points it out)
– not a great deal of optical adjustment possible, so you need to be spot on with your mounting position, angle and distance.

Dave

The octavia is the other obvious option… only problem is that my dad has just bought one. A beige one. I’m not sure I can do that to myself.

cbeebies:
shaun the sheep
peter rabbit
hey duggee

netflix kids:
thomas the tank engine
bob the builder

that little lot keep my 18 month old (or rather me, when he has wandered off after the intro music finishes) entertained.

Dave

We’re nearly there… the wee man is currently flying along on his toddle bike at 17 months old. I reckon this summer, I’ll get him a balance bike.

‘stupid’

My wife has reynauds… the whinging is insufferable ;)

The best thing we (I) have found is bar mitts, plus a decent pair of gloves.

She has both the MTB and Road flavours and loves them both:
http://www.ajbikeequipment.com/page2.htm

Dave

snowcard – they cover me for trad, sport, bouldering, off-piste snowboarding and all manner of biking.

they also picked up the pieces quite effectively when I bust my pelvis in les gets.

Dave

We are not sure if we want to fit an open fire or a log burner yet but assuming they will take the same flue.

I wouldn’t make that assumption.

We have an open fire, and the chimney is leaking. To get it lined we’ve been quoted ~£3k… I think flexible metal liners (suitable for wood burning stoves) are a lot less money.

Dave

We used Pure Plumbing[/url] for a new boiler and tank. Big job, that was more difficult than they expected, but impressed with the way they stuck at it – they had 9 guys in working on at at one point!

Dave

good old cbeebies?

what is the difference between light and hard?

you can sleep with a light on.

I had a vrx 300 back in the day… weighed a tonne, but was actually not too shite. Thoroughly surpassed by most things these days, but not too awful for its time.

http://www.pavingexpert.com/gravel01.htm

I’ve got a mobi, and it leaks like a sieve

Looks like it was filmed much slower, and sped up to sync.

Also, those weren’t the same unicycles, those ones had a back wheel – still look fun though.

ah… drone

one shot? how the….

erm.

what? how?

What is his midichlorian count?

Paramo +1

I’ve got a velez adventure smock, and a synthetic jacket whose name I can’t remember. Toasty and dry :)

How much for an indemnity? Have you tried getting a quote?

This came up the other day:

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/psa-cheap-commuter-backpack

I bought one. Haven’t used it in anger yet, but it seems like it’ll be fine for commuting use.

Dave

Dirty Burger (out the back door of Vauxhall station). Not cheap as takeaway burgers go, but cheap compared to a restaurant meal. Damn tasty too :)

Oh and Zeitgeist on Black Prince Road for copious amounts of German fried stuff (schnitzel etc) :)

@jambalaya – as I said, that still won’t solve it, look at the width of the bars in the picture, they reach all the way to the 3rd slot, so a bike in the 3rd slot is going to want to have its bars in exactly the same place.

Nice idea, but it’s going to suffer from the same problem as every other rack of its kind. I reckon you’ll fit 4 bikes in that without turning the bars; maybe 5 if you respaced the slots.

Happy to be proved wrong, but POIDH.

Dave

How is he solving the bar clash problem?

I found with anything I made to store bikes like that there was no way to get two side by side the same way around. Even top’n’tail they still clash with the bike two slots over!

Damn these wide bars!

Dave

and for once the comments are quite sensible…. ‘what if they had a gun?’

I’ve got a nest… looks very nice, and handy being able to turn it on and off from afar. The user interface is really nice (both in person and on the app)

The ‘learning’ part of it is pretty pointless for me. I know what temperatures I want and when, and I’ve programmed it as such.

It’s other main feature is its ability to learn how long it takes my house to heat up, taking in to account local weather and past heating times. Too early to tell how well this works, the heating has only been on a couple of times since it was installed at the beginning of summer.

Worth the money? Probably not. My central heating was being replaced, and they offered me a nest (coupled with my old dual circuit timer) for £15 more than a new combined thermostat and timer.

Dave

Last I heard was that they were going to try for October, and if that wasn’t possible, they’d wait until March.