Thanks mate, I appreciate that, and yes, it’s exactly as in the picture.

Ah thanks slowoldman, I should have checked the other stages for comparison. Yes, first and last makes perfect sense. Looks like we have a whole day to catch some action.

Please just drive it far from the roads I use, lorries get a hard time for fouling up traffic on dual carriageways but caravans are the worst by far. Hateful things, like sleeping in a drum…

I can feel it coming towards us, south Surrey. Where are you Molgrips?

Coconut Boost. Can’t believe it’s 20 years since it was discontinued :(

Thanks guys. Will give it a go.

Sorry to hijack this guys but could do with some advice. I often need to open DWG and DXF files and remove some layers so I can ‘clean up’ a drawing before printing, Trueview seems to work fairly well but are there any free packages out these that would be worth looking at. If one provided the ability to add detail without being too complex that would be a bonus. Cheers.

This is something I’d never heard of until now, very interested. I assume these are practice for any garden, what about the cut (mulch) and kids? Will they bring grass into the house following every trip to the garden?

Are there any negatives to this as it sounds the ideal way to care for a lawn?

Apple, Audi, Orange5… You’ve got to love minor trolling but nice try guys :wink:

It’s a good question. I’d say an awful to of property in London is expensive and rubbish, probably a lot outside of London too.

I’ll exclude eight months travelling round Australia and South East Asia at 19, awesome as it was it’s a little different to a conventional holiday. I would however recommend a trip to one or more of the Islands inThailand, they are stunningly beautiful. Link.[/url]

Otherwise my two favourite holidays (pre kids) were sailing round the coast of Turkey for two weeks and our Honeymoon to Tulum in Mexico, in Mexico we stayed at Azulik where they have posh cabanas overlooking the Caribbean Sea, it was utterly sensational. The Yucatan peninsula is superb and one of the best places I’ve ever visited.

Sailing in Greece or Turkey is brilliant you find some proper gems along the coast. Beautiful little bays with nothing but a small restaurant; tender into the beach and get tipsy eating local nosh, back to the boat and in the morning climb out the hatch and roll into the warm sea to clear your head. Really, really good fun. Waiting for the kids to get past ten so we can do it again. Epic.

What?

Game of thrones
24
House of cards
Breaking bad
Silent witness
The Americans
Blue bloods
Networks of power
The blacklist
Luther
Strike back
Horizon

And on and on, TV’s not live anymore so you can mix old and new. Can’t remember a time when TV was better than this. Of course without Sky or Virgin you’re pretty much stuffed though.

Not my wife, but several people I’ve met recently. I used to go to both Club UK (Wandsworth) and Lazedrome (Peckham) in the 90s and a few of our new friends used to do the same. God knows we probably crossed paths countless times…

Oh the good old days :D

That Poem reminds me of the film ’Stigmata’, epic film and presents religion in a way that I found interesting. The idea that belief is from within and that’s where you’ll find god, not in churches etc…

Must dig that out again. I might not believe but that’s one hell of a movie. Thanks Hora :D

Off for a ride, catch up with this later.

I get that not all Christians wear a badge and I suppose statistics support his comments to some to some extent, but religion is such a contentious subject labelling our country ‘Christian’ is going to erk someone. I’m not sure that in this day and age politicians should be making such sweeping generalisations. I’m one of the 25% who happily ticks the ‘no religion’ box but I’m also British… As I said I’m not that bothered but I feel a little uncomfortable when politics and religion are mixed together.

Depends what you call cheap but I’ve been using Fulham Broadway carpark[/url] for several years. 24h and straight onto the District line without going outside, not exactly cheap during the day but still much better than metered parking in the city, however if you arrive after 6pm and leave before 9am the maximum charge is a tenner and that’s very good.

Does buying stuff enhance your life?

He’ll yes, but purchases only effect less important areas. I’m happily Married, have two great kids, fantastic friends and a great job, these are the important things in life and there’s not much you can buy that will directly effect them.

However last September I bought a brand new car and it has definitely enhanced my commute. I recently bought my son a new bike and it’s enhanced both his life and mine, I could go on… Frivolous spending is what’s bad. Buying cool stuff that gets used is fun.

People buy things like massive TV’s to fill a void in their life.

Some people have lots of money and a TV doesn’t exactly cost much these days. I think most people would class those who spend their spare time talking to strangers on-line as having the biggest void in their life. Except me of course, I’m exempt :oops:

Christopher Ward C11 is a little over budget at £499 but I have one and they’re very good, my Omega Seamaster has been relegated to second place since I got the C11, as much as I like it the C11 just looks great.

Christopher Ward C11

In order…

1. Rover Metro. Fell apart around me but much of that was probably my fault. Not well built though.
2. VW Sirocco GTII. Only had it a short while and don’t want to talk about it, I loved that car :oops:
3. VW Golf 1.8GL. Had it for around 3 years and 20,000 miles. Solid and not much went wrong.
4. Citroen BX1.9GTi. Plastic rubbish! The engine finally went pop after just about everything else had failed.
5. Subaru Forester Turbo. Rear suspension failed, lots of electrical failures, some engine failures. Not a good example.
6. Toyota RAV4. 4 years and 100,000 miles, virtually nothing went wrong and passed every MOT. Wow! Sold it to my sister and it’s still going strong.
7. 63 plate VW CC GT. Had it since September and already clocked 15,000. Not a whisper of an issue. Awesome car.

So, from my experience I can summarise as follows; UK and French cars are awful, good Japanese are superb, poor ones not so, VW are on the whole extremely good and sometimes awesome. Oh, the Forester was a 2000 and the RAV4 a 2002, can’t remember the others.

http://www.flatearthnews.net/footnotes-book/page-28-heroin/whats-wrong-war-against-drugs

Thanks for that, pretty much sums up my opinion. Question is, how do we resolve this?

good idea, make up a political party with that as the main driver and see how many votes you get.

Clearly that would never work. But the first party to step up and make a serious call for legalisation would get my vote. The ‘war on drugs’ is a losing battle and not doing anyone any good, in fact quite the reverse. We often hear critics holding those who use drugs responsible for the harm done to lives in the supply chain, I see it the other way, it’s not the user it’s the law that creates this misery. Look at booze, there’s no problem in the supply chain, the problem is that it’s one of the worst drugs to make legal. Legalise pot, E and Coke and I recon you’ll see booze become less of an issue. Not so sure about Heroin, Meth, Crack, they’re just too dangerous.

People will always want to get high and we need an effective mechanism to support them, not push it into the criminal underworld. Don’t get me wrong drugs are not good, but they are good fun. Let people have there fun, put a legal framework in place, tax it, make sure you can test for it (driving etc) and provide a legal alternative to alcohol.

They just stop your brain from functioning correctly. What is enlightening about that?

Semantics! They make your brain work differently. You see things from a very different perspective and that is very enlightening. Subtle but profound.

I had a quick look and the expense and my music habits quickly ruled it out. A couple of DAB radio’s in each room would be much better VFM. IMO the expense massively outweighs the slight incovenience of having a CD player in each room and moving a CD between rooms.

What is that quote from the Matrix?

“Ignorance is bliss”

Really you should try it. If you like music, you’ll love Sonos.

Just answering a couple of points raised with my earlier post…

This is classic meaningless diversionary twaddle.

Come up with some measurable effects that those cables produce and you will have us, otherwise it’s just marketing bollocks.

I was referring to a complete ‘system’ rather than cables themselves so went a little off topic. However it’s a pertinent point when doing blind or open listening tests. Aspects such as sound stage and imaging are not ‘measurable’ however I’ve found them to be a very good means of discerning the improvements (or not) offered by different system configurations. Yes it’s subjective but having spent years in the retail environment and done thousands of demos it has always proved to be useful for clients.

Cables can very easily change the tonal character of a system and the cable manufacturers capitalise on this,
Really? What happens to the electrons in a $200 interconnect compared to a $20 interconnect that makes such a difference?

I’m not going to be drawn too much on this but when I refer to ‘tonal character’ I’m not referring to quality but how bright, smooth etc. a system sounds. Whilst I’m firmly in the camp that cables have a placebo type effect in that quality is perceived rather than improved, we used cables to make minor adjustments to systems to tailor the sound to the clients ear. Minor as they were time and time again this process worked so from experience there was (and still is) some impact cables play. Cost of cable was never a serious factor though, just a well manufactured cable.

£1600 on an Ethernet cable is utterly laughable. FFS a £0.20 patch cable will have to be manufactured to the same spec or it won’t meet the category requirements. hmmm, we usually use blue cables for our network connections, we should try red, maybe that will sound better?

“In a blind test I would wager that most could not tell you which is the £1000 and which is the £10,000.”

Horse poo. Sorry, but if you design two systems to be as close as possible in terms of tonal presentation to try and maintain a similar ‘sound’ a £10k system will be far superior; soundstage, dynamics, imaging, pretty much anything than can be used to analyse performance would be improved. Whether the listener can or would justify the extra expense is a different question and highly subjective though.

Needless to say most of my favorite systems cost a lot less than £10k.

Cables?

Cables can very easily change the tonal character of a system and the cable manufacturers capitalise on this, you can’t measure it so it’s very easy to say “hey look, it’s better isn’t it?”. The thing with cables is that we all like to ‘believe’ we’ve made the right decision(s) to justify expense; in Hi-Fi it’s cabling and with bikes it’s weight; I mean do we really believe we’ll ride faster with an XTR rather than XT cassette? Deep down we know not but when spending £5k on a bike you want to ‘believe’ this is the right choice. Not trying to start a new discussion here but you get my point. Cable manufacturers, websites and high street retailers all take advantage of this to add margin to a sale.

News flash : businesses are out to make money and not every sales tactic is entrenched in scientific theory. Yes, I bought XTR! but I never spent more than £100 on all my cables for a system. :?:

I moved from high street to contract sales nearly ten years ago and I still giggle at the things I believed and the tactics I used. Yes most CD players had very similar internal components but you’d be amazed how differently they sounded, sometimes very slight but everyone likes choice. £20k on a CD player though, nope! £20k on speakers? Quite possibly.

I spend most of my time now focusing on user interface. When you install £500k+ Multi-room systems high quality is a given, it’s more about how easy it is to use as no amount of quality will fix a system that’s difficult. What do I use for music? Sonos. I don’t care how much money a client has Sonos offers the best user experience and is easily good enough for pretty much everyone.

I suppose you have to define good. I suppose it must reflect your ability to actually drive a vehicle, and that should include a range of driving conditions, overtaking, good parking, etc. then knowledge of the Highway Code, the way you treat the law and consideration / view of other road users. Not that it matters that much I drive about 30,000 miles a year and would score myself as follows.

Ability : 9/10
Highway Code : 8/10
The law : 6/10
Other road users : 7/10

I can handle a vehicle and definitely consider myself a good ‘driver’, I know the Highway Code but I definitely do not keep to the letter of the law regarding speed. Always safe but often a little quicker than plod would allow on the quicker roads. I get a little frustrated with stupidity or outright inability sometimes but that’s all. Over all I’d say I’m average all things considered, but I’m definitely a good ‘driver’…

Home, office it makes no difference to me or my company. My boss is completely flexible as long he can see I’m productive, if anything I get more done at home anyway as I save the two hour commute.

As noted above a wave of the leg is a common and yes, we do notice. I make a point of always moving over and I’d say about 30% offer some kind of signal, mostly either a leg or lifted fingers. Always appreciated. However personally I think you’re all cheating and as such if you did any thing silly like use a high beam I’d close the gap…

Netflix? I jumped straight into House of Cards after finishing Breaking Bad about three weeks ago. As much as I enjoyed Breaking Bad and would argue it’s probably the most original series in a long time, I enjoyed House of Cards more. Brilliant. Finished the series over a long weekend…

Can’t say it’s a surprise but sorry to witness the end of an era, however over the last two years Pertersen has been more a dissapoitment with the bat than anything else. Clearly a disruptive presence in the dressing room but I agree with you Zokes, he was England’s best and has achieved much, but he’s also been a resident, senior player preciding over a huge drop in performance. If you want to re build you don’t do it around disruptive players unless they are still performing. If he had hit a double and a couple of hundreds trying to rescue the team then this might not have happened but even with the best batting figures for the tour he gave away his wicket far too easily.

If you’re going to make big changes then noes the time to do it, the only way is up from that farce of a tour. Oh and remove Cook? Don’t be silly. Poor tour but he still has a huge amount to give and who exactly would you turn to?

I wish him luck but look forward to a new England.

Brilliant thread. Can’t comment on the OPs point other than to say the Mosquito was lovely, but the Wiki link by Legend got me surfing about WWII ordinance and heavy bombing by the US and RAF. I remember reading about the Tallboys but had never heard of the Grand Slam at 22,000lbs 8O

This then led to a link about the German submarine manufacturing facility at Velentin that we put out of business about two months before it was due to start production, although we were lucky to hit the 4.5m ceiling with two Grand Slams as the 7.5m section would have held… Blimey! The following quote is from Wiki describing the raid on Valentin and nearby oil facility – 227 aircraft total…

“The Valentin factory was attacked by the RAF on 27 March 1945. The attacking force consisted of twenty Avro Lancaster heavy bombers of 617 Squadron which had, after the “Dambusters” raid, developed precision bombing methods. Simultaneously, a force of 115 Lancasters bombed the nearby fuel oil storage depot in the village of Schwanewede. The bombers were escorted by ninety RAF North American Mustang fighters of 11 Group”

Bloody heroic. Epic on a huge scale and this was just one of the big sorties.

– Peanut butter on toast with either poached or scrambled eggs.
– Toasted cheese sandwich (using sandwich maker) with ham, peanut butter and baked beans.
– Soft egg (poached or fried) with any Pizza. Fold pizza.
– Peanut butter and Philadelpia sandwich (warm toast).

Hungry now…

Lovely car, enjoy. Although…

Combined mpg of 47 too!

Hahahaha my 07 one was quoted similarly. 40k odd real miles later and the average was about 28. Still, not too bad considering the fun it provided

… Watch out for this. I have a 63 plate CC which is advertised with a combined Mpg of 55, after just shy of 9000 miles I average 45Mpg, OK I drive fairly quickly on the motorways but I don’t hoon around elsewhere. That said I love the car so have largely ignored it and put it down to experience – I will have a chat with VW what it goes in for it’s first service and see what they have to say about it.

It’s a shame when a negative comment, posted in response to a genuine question simply kills a thread dead by encouraging a stream of off topic junk posts most of which aren’t even amusing. To be fair there are times when a mistake by the OP is jumped on with superb results (Wife/Wi-Fi) but this is quite rare. I feel a bit for the OPs when this happens as the questions are often genuin requests for help and some jumped up arse feels the need to take the p*ss…

+1

Well that was fun :(

I have no hope of anything other than a good thrashing, the senior players have lost all confidence and we have no one able to inflict fear in the Aussy camp. Big changes ahead me thinks… Quite interested to see what happens in the one day series, hopefully we’ll see some of the other tourists step up and show some tallent.

Stokes deserves some credit again but the barmy army were England’s outstanding performers today… :oops:

I don’t think she really knows why she why their buying it other than to stay up with the times and sees them more as a computer than a entertainment tablet. Apps are not too important.

Then don’t buy a tablet, you know perfectly well they are not computers… A tablet is all about Apps. If you get her a Windows tablet she’ll hate it; an Android will probably frustrate her but be cheaper; Apple is the only one she has an outside chance of enjoying but will cost more, however the range of Apps and simple UI will likely win her over more so than the competition – Android is nice but lacks Apples intuitiveness, not for someone who’s not tech literate IMO.

Well done Stokes and well wrapped up. Yet again we have them cornered at 97-5 and can’t close it out, another good knock from Haddin and Smith, Haddin has been a real thorn in our side all series and has prevented a late order tumble on several occasions – we really haven’t done enough to work out how to get him and paid the price…

I have an Otterbox defender for my 5 which I use for riding and other outdoor activities, gives me complete confidence to use my phone in any conditions. Not cheap but then again neither is the phone… They do a 5C version.

Otterbox link

One of the more less considered comments from STW this year…

Pete Tong ! for giving us a slang use of his name it really has gone wrong ! ( now lets be honest his music promotes the use of drugs does it not ? )

:roll:

That’s it I’ve heard enough, must go find one to have a go :?:

Basically I’m looking for a programme to manage music & film library with a nice app Available both on iphone & android tablet. I have played with xbmc but it did not like my film collection so refused to display them on the app.

Secondly, I would like to add the ability to listen to music in the bedroom.

I believe my requirements are;
+Manage my library of music and films.
+Be able to be remotely controlled by phone (iPhone) and tablet (andriod)
+play music in different rooms.

Two different requirements here, user interface and playback hardware, in fact three if you split music and video as I would recommend. You can solve all with hi-end hardware and associated user interfaces but at great expense, let’s assume that option is not on the table…

So, as noted by several STW colleagues above Sonos is ideal for Music. I understand the attraction of managing everything via a single UI but the simple truth is that Sonos, hands down, is better (for music) than anything else on the market. OK it will mean using two apps for media control but this is a small consideration, if you try and integrate the two you may end up with something that works quite well but it will never be as good. I’ve been in the industry 20yrs and have battled with this for a while – I’ve satisfied myself that right now this is the best solution. For your home theatre add a Sonos Connect and in your bedroom, either a standalone integrated speaker like the Play:5 or a Connect Amp and separate speakers. Trust the advise it’s brilliant.

For Video I’ve heard great things about Plex but not used it myself. Video is a secondary consideration for me so at home I use a Western Digital WDTV and NAS, it’s OK but simple. Having just had another look at Plex I might have a tinker using the Roku media player and Plex interface – I have an old Mac Mini lying around so this would make a nice Plex server. If you keep your computer connected to the theatre system then this will be all you need, if Plex works for you I’d then look at Roku as a media streamer is much tidier than connecting computers to AV systems.

Not sure what to say… Went to bed at 10-0 and woke up to see us batting! FFS let’s just pack up and go home.