Well, it’s from these positions that we’ve let Australia off the hook in two of the last three tests. Let’s see if we can do it properly this time…

Seems like 275 was being far too hopeful 🙁

Yes, MJ’s quick, but not unplayable. Harris is by far the better bowler.

Yep, with you there completely and I also agree that a lot of this is down to England’s mental attitude but Johnson is much to blame for this, he has them rattled. Gower is a client of mine and I had a chat with him a few years ago about facing the West Indies attack (back then) – his comment was that when the ball hits 90+ make yourself a very thin target 😯

It appears England have got it into their head that it’s about surviving and this is very bad for a batsman, only KP is showing much (mental) resilience but we know how he likes to toss things up every now and then. I do hope he goes on tomorrow, for all his faults he’s a joy to watch and a good score here will silence his naysayers.

Sorry mate the wickets speak for themselves. I didn’t say he’s brilliant just too good for us, both Stokes and Bresnan where done by pure pace, a great line and a little late movement – if that’s not ‘too good’ then I don’t know what is. I don’t rate him as a world class bowler, he’s just in a purple patch and will be undone by better batsman in tests to come but right now he’s one big difference between the two teams. 25 wickets in four 3.1 tests! don’t be so argumentative FFS.

Great quote from David Gower;

“That last spell from Johnson might have just tipped the day Australia’s way”

Really DG? If England pass 275 tomorrow I’ll be surprised. Then Australia on a good wicket with our bowling… Same story different venue unless someone steps up and does something special.

Yep, lovely thanks. Wife, kids, parents, sisters, one brother in-law (the other is ill) and two nephews. Mum out did herself with a truly awesome lunch and presents were great. Even allowed to fall asleep in the afternoon for an hour or so 😀

Nice to see others having a lovely day too. Now, Boxing Day….

New ball, Johnson, 90+mph, two overs, two wickets… There’s the main difference between the teams right there. He’s too good and too fast (at the moment) for our middle order and tail – actually make that the whole bloody line up!

Merry Christmas STW.

Not sure why but I can’t stand riding with no one else to talk to?

With you all the way. Same with Skiing, both are individual sports that I find difficult to do on my own. I love to ride but the social side makes it so much more, so much so that the idea of going alone is not particularly attractive. Ultimately wouldn’t stop me if push came to shove and no one was around but…

Last orders on a cold night ride wouldn’t be the same without good company.

Take care. One of our number left London at 4.30pm yesterday and finally got to Guildford at 8pm to find nothing going further south, his wife came and picked him up at around 9pm and he managed to join us for last orders. Apparently lots of travellers aiming for Portsmouth and stations further south were heading back into London to find Hotels – one of those days where everything fell apart.

That said I think the cabbies in Guildford had an early Christmas yesterday, some of the fares must have been interesting!!

Get interested with her, and learn stuff together,

Well said that man, especially ^^ that bit.

It was fun… Went to a pub in the Devils Punch Bowl last night and it was pretty foul, very wet and very, very windy. Got home around 11pm and started watching a movie – midnight the power went out and I thought here we go! Message from Southern Electric said it was too dangerous for engineers to work so nothing would be done until morning, thankfully woke up to power around half an hour ago.

Sounds like others haven’t been so lucky, I hope they’re sorted soon 😯

Northern Ireland and Scotland face 80mph winds Christmas Day… Pour a scotch, light the fire and batten down the hatches lads, hope you have a safe day.

I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Both my iPad 1 & 2 have suitable covers and my 5yr & 7yr old kids use them without issue. Might be expensive but it’s not your cash and assuming your kid is responsible it’ll be fine. Bet your telly cost more than that and it gets a ton of use…

Several years ago I used an Epson P-2000 which did the trick, slow but it provided a useful back up. Discontinued now but a quick scan of the web brought this to the surface…

hyperdrive[/url]

… Pretty much the same but reinvented for the iPad generation so you can view photos on a large third party screen. However I think these devices are a bit of a waste now, they date very fast and become another battery concern on long trips. SD cards are so cheap now all you need to do is work out how many shots you may take, double it and buy cards to suit. They’re small, light, aren’t damaged by water and will take a hit – by far the most cost efficient means of carrying lots of photos.

Congratulations to you both, what a lovely Christams present!

Played an hour of squash this afternoon against two mates, all of us of similar standard. Going to feel it tomorrow but it was brilliant.

Interesting this Racquetball thing, never played it so I can’t comment but I am curious…

And I thoroughly agree with the above. As 2 ex county tennis players me and mate some 5/6 years ago decided to have a game of racquetball! I thought I was gonna die as the rallies were so long!

So if two fairly even players are on court it sounds like it’s very difficult to ‘win’ a point, more a case of last man standing? I kind if get that but doesn’t it remove the techincal ‘fun’ of out playing your opponent and delivering a killing shot? Not knocking it just curious how it works.

Take it back…

The fact that the aerial input isn’t working is a concern so I’d check this, back to store if it can’t be resolved. The fact that a separate Freeview receiver works confirms the antenna connection is OK. HDMI connection between set top box and TV should not result in any degradation of picture. A lot of (cheaper) TVs struggle with standard def video as they don’t have the processing power to scale the image well, these sorts of Telly’s are usually displayed in store with HD video which pretty much looks good on most TVs.

Make sure the two are connected properly, turn off everything in the picture settings menu on the TV and see what the results are like. Even better find a DVD or Blu-Ray with calibration tools and get the contrast, brightness etc. sorted.

What TV is it?

Which part of Sussex Spooky? I’m near Haslemere on the Surrey / Sussex boarder.

Don’t do it kids!

Ah, but I met my wife whilst out on a school night – a Wednesday IIRC. Don’t be too quick to jump ship, you never know what might happen 😉

If I have to listen to that awful excuse of a record from Leona Lewis one more time… It’s what I hate about commercial radio stations, they play absolute rubbish from ‘big’ names because they’re paid to, not because it’s any good.

I actually enjoy most of the good Christmas songs, especially the older ones. But Leona needs shooting for that one. Hopeless 👿

Squash is awesome.

Huge plus 1. Playing against someone of equal or better standard is superb, it’s a three dimensional game quite unlike any other, just got back into it a few weeks ago as well. Brilliant.

Do the different colour dot balls still exist? I always thought there was too much of a rush to play yellow dots when easxier balls made the rallies longer and the exercise better!!! But male egos got in the way!!!!

Wrong way round. Double yellow is the slowest ball and leads to the fastest game, bounces less so you have to move more. Red on the other hand is like a bouncy ball and you just stroll around – you should always aim to play the slowest ball matched to you and your opponents standard. Of course if you’re a bit rubbish and use double yellow your rallies will last about two shots… No offence intended.

We’re starting off on yellow but I would advise a learner to start with red. Try and get it nice and warm before you arrive on court as well.

Amazing the number of seemingly intelligent people with no idea of the multiple definitions of the word ‘personality’.

Couldn’t agree more. What also never gets discussed is the pressure a video camera puts on you – don’t know about the rest of you but I fall apart if so much as a smart phone is stuck in my face and I’m asked to comment… We’re all guilty of judging someones personality without ever having met them going on video footage alone, yet how wrong we probably are in so many cases.

OK so AM is particularly bad on telly but, having watched the documentary on him after he won Wimbledon, what struck me was the depth of friendship and team from those around him.

‘The Bodyguard’ apparently. I (reluctantly) saw ‘Jason and His Amazing Technocolour Waistcoat’ in about 1986 at the London Palladium.

My wife went to see the Bodyguard recently and quite enjoyed it. I however, let her go with her sisters and stayed home, London maybe one of the best places for a day/night out but there’s no show on earth that’ll get me on a train… I sympathise 😐

Might I suggest that you arrange for an early viewing so you can go eat/drink/dance somewhere fun afterwards, at least that gives you something to look forward to 😉

Film 4. Now!

One of my all time favourites, thanks…

These aren’t exactly stupid questions but they’re very common and quite annoying. One that never seems to go away…

“Which is better, LED/LCD or Plasma?”

The exit by Panasonic from the Plasma market may resolve this. The other, becoming ever more common…

“Can’t I do it wirelessly?”

Off from the 18th to the 2nd, three days work then off to Vegas from 8th – 12th inclusive 8)

I’m sat here typing and currently have a sped of 72 meg which is 3/4s of the theoretical max of cat 5, now when the supplier to the curb lifts its speed to over 100 m I may struggle but I dont know of any ISP who will be offering speeds of over 100 Mbs in the near future.

CAT5e supports Gigabit Ethernet – that’s 1024Mbps so your (admittedly very good) 75Mbps Wi-Fi is only 7.5% of what CAT5e can support. Also, Virgin has Fibre speeds in excess of 100Mbps already.

so what are you all doing in your house that you need this much cabling ? steaming HD movies via apple TV wirelessly and i cope just fine….

So hands up who has a need for transferring 4 gig ? never mind 24 gig. I’m wondering if someone is just googling stuff on the net and firing off comments, I’m retired but did a lot of work with switches dont remember it all but the speeds you are talking are immense for simple home networking. The 80 meg [yes meg] is my ISP speed my network runs at 100 meg but even a tv program in HD I’m sure aint much more tan 45 meg. So maybe you have a clear feed into your house which would be about 2 gig, we use to take those direct from some broadcasters, but sticking it up to a transmitter we only had 68 meg.

Easy to get lost in networking when discussing home wiring, especially CAT5e, but the cable is also used to deliver HD Video, IR/RS232 commands, audio etc. so it’s a very versatile cable. Some people have bigger houses so they not only need wireless solutions that require multi access points they also need a cable solution that allows media to be shared – if you have Sky/Virgin/Freeview/Freesat tuners with a recordable service (most of them do these days) and want to access the recorded content on multiple TVs you need structured wiring. A CAT5e with HDBaseT hardware will allow you to do this.

There was a big drive a few years back to future proof homes with Fibre as streaming rates climbed higher and higher but, in reality, CAT5e is still more than adequate. It’s also cheap and easy to run. We’ve only needed to use fibre on a handful of properties and these we’re Saudi Royalty, huge and more a small to medium business than a home. Even then we could have survived without it. As fast as (video) resolution has increased the industry has been very good at creating codecs that keep the data rate under control. CAT5e supports both HDBaseT and Gigabit Ethernet and as such will support uncompressed video including 3D, 2k/4k resolutions with full colour depth, not many of us even use this in anger so still some headroom…

You don’t really need anything more than CAT5e, however we install CAT6 anywhere a TV is going on the simple principle that if any technology is going to require the extra bandwidth video is it. Not essential though. Just remember that CAT6 has some pretty stringent installation requirements and if you don’t do it right it’s a waste. For what it’s worth I’m doing my place soon and will only use CAT5; I won’t be in the house long enough for it to be a problem.

Pick a good sized ‘Hub’ location, preferably one with ventilation, and star wire everything back to this location. Don’t forget power.

Your data solution is fine and one cable to a second ‘wireless access point’ is fine. By the way ‘Repeater’ is the wrong word, repeating a signal reduces throughput and is usually done wirelessly. You’re on the right track with cabling though.

Four CT100 satellite cables to the dish, one to the mast, then two from (the hub) where they end to each TV point. Add 2x CAT5e for video / data to the TV points as well.

Speaker cables to any room you may want sound. Whether you go to the ceiling, wall or skirting is up to you but as and when you want something like Sonos it’s nice to have all the gear out of sight.

Pretty much all you need on the AV side. Security? CCTV? Lighting? Heating? Access control? Much cheaper to put cables in now than once the decorators walk off site!

EDIT

Don’t rely on Powerline, it was invented to provide a solution for those who didn’t wire their house first time round. Powerline has a limited bandwidth and with lots of activity on the network could bottleneck. It also only serves as a networking solutions unlike CAT5e which can be used in lots of ways.

Junkyard of course I object to such extremes of wealth disparity, who wouldn’t. And of course I agree with sharing through a structured tax system, in fact my point regarding ‘sharing’ was a semantic view of the word that got lost a little in translation – let’s leave it at that before I dig myself into a hole… 😉

ok, let’s see the figures that back this up.

Trailmonkey I wasn’t suggesting that these two areas are responsible for the current mess, more highlighting the fact that I believe them to be intimately tied to the problems faced by many with little or no means. I maybe wrong but it’s only an opinion so happy to be corrected.

What folk have said is that it gives an unfair advantage to their kids, – the stats back this up hence you have to start off with a ludicrous straw man as the facts support our view which is nothing like what you say.

The stats would, I assume, simply point out that better schooling raises a child’s prospects, not that we should remove the best schooling we have. However I completely agree with you that we need to vastly improve our state school system though.

Having listened to Sonos, BandW and Bose stuff, I’d put Sonos in third place, sonically, with BandW easily top.
A BandW A5 is £400 though….. Although you can get them for £300.

Peter you’re referring to integrated, single speaker comparisons and the OP is referring to conventional speaker/amp combinations…

so the speakers themselves can be hardwired

… In this regard Sonos is quite simply the only multi-room system mentioned so far. The Connect Amp, or Connect plus separate power amp with a decent set of speakers is in a completely different league. Airplay, via Airport Express, using third party amps will work in a similar fashion but lacks several features and it’s nothing like as good as Sonos. Just cheaper.

You are right though, BandW Airplay speakers are superior to Sonos integrated speakers such as the Play:5 / Play:3 / Play:1 but should only ever be considered in single room solutions. Multi-room? Sonos every time.

Hmmmm, seems to be a running consensus of opinion that wealth, especially excessive wealth, is the root of all evil and anything related to it is a bad thing. My opinion is a little coloured here as my business is geared towards dealing with (and selling to) the very wealthy, from my perspective they are the source of my income so it’s hard to agree with this even if I agree with some of the sentiment expressed if not the arguments themselves.

I spoke to someone the other day spent the evening sat in darkness because they had no money for a leccy card, with no food, no prospect of work, no money for his kids xmas pressies and what income he got was via illegal means. And he’s one of many doing the same thing or already in prison

should not be happening, in this country, in the 21st century, when there is such massive wealth, that is not being taxed or shared.

Clearly this is not right. However this idea of sharing is not one I agree with, tax yes, use the money to drive up educational standards and give everyone a better start in life yes, but share? Semantics I appreciate but share is the wrong word, a little too Robin Hood 😯

Welfare and immigration is significantly to blame. There are always jobs, just lots of them are not very attractive so we allow immigrants to come in, accept low wages and take these jobs. Then welfare pics up the bill at huge expense and traps people in a situation very difficult to escape from.

Back to BJ there was one statement regarding this that I agreed with in principle, he could have used better wording but let’s not get distracted by that;

“It seems to me therefore that though it would be wrong to persecute the rich, and madness to try and
stifle wealth creation, and futile to try to stamp out inequality, that we should only tolerate this wealth
gap on two conditions: one, that we help those who genuinely cannot compete; and, two, that we
provide opportunity for those who can.”

We need a minimum wage that tracks inflation and stops both government and large business from exploiting low paid workers. Reduce immigration and definitely make sure that foreign workers aren’t a ‘cheap’ solution – they aren’t better skilled they just cost less, fix this and you fix a big issue. But don’t stop entrepreneurs from getting rich and don’t take away their privileges, just tax them and close as many tax loop holes as possible.

State schooling is a problem and until we pay teachers more it’ll not be fixed. Removing independent schools is not the solution, that’s just daft. You’ve got to remember that not all independent schools are Eatons, Harrows or Wellingtons, most are just good schools with good facilities – and bedrooms! but not necessarily better educational facilities than the better state schools. There are some very, very good state schools, we just need a government able to bring the poor performing schools into line. What was it Tony said? “Education, education, education”. Spot on but as usual hollow words… Don’t care who does it just do it already.

Yes he’d make such a refreshing change from the public-school educated elite currently running the country.

I’m no Tory boy but as it happens I was public school educated, as was one of my sisters from GCSE through A Levels, my other sister was state educated. We all did OK, nothing exceptional, but you’d not know now which of us went to which school. What exactly what is your issue with public school education? The elite bit I can understand but you make it (public school) sound like a dirty thing? Weird.

What was it? “We’ve abolished Boom and Bust” Ha, you had no idea what you were doing you bloody loonies…

This was not an attack at Labour although it was GB who uttered the words, more an attack on politicians in general, it is my considered opinion that they ride what ever wave they can find and claim to be responsible for it and, when it all goes tits up, spend the next five years blaming everyone else.

If, just for a moment, the political sides would stop lobbing historical rocks at one another, in a blame game that no one will ever win, they could look at where we are at the moment and seek to develop a future which does not entail sacrificing one or more generations of the country’s inhabitants or destroying it’s brilliantly inventive and entrepreneurial spirit.

Sadly, I cannot ever see this happening because the vacuous idiots who are immersed in their own myopic ideologies will never develop a social conscience that will enable them to look beyond their own political ambitions.

I’m with Rogerthecat, stop mucking about, stand up and be counted, say something different, do something different or stop pretending you know what you’re doing. Can’t see it happening as every time someone says something really useful but politically sensitive they get flamed. The ‘whip’? Now there’s democracy in action 🙄

Perhaps things are different in London, but when I drive the vast majority of motorists do something illegal (including me!). Could you be ignoring the “socially-acceptable” illegal driving such as speeding, going through amber lights, using bus lanes, tailgating etc?

Well, I am talking about London during rush hour so tailgating is the only option, only at about 5mph so it’s definitely not about speeding. This is more my opinion based on what I see; swerving at speed between vehicles, jumping ‘red’ lights, sudden stops, undertaking everything regardless or junctions or turnings. I’m not defending the motorist or suggesting for one minute that they are perfect, far from it, I’m just saying that IMO, in London, the cyclist is worse. Most of them seem to be bonkers or have some misplaced sense of invincibility.

fallacy #1: something needed to be done, Thatcherism was something, therefore Thatcherism needed to be done.

Really? Quoting the BBC.

But like so many stereotypes, the cliches of the grim 1970s have more than a grain of truth. These were desperately difficult years for Britain, both politically and economically.

In many ways they marked a reckoning for a country that had been too complacent for too long, basking in the sunshine of post-war affluence, and indifferent to the fact that our foreign competitors had not only caught up with us – they were leaving us behind.

Sailor Ted, however, soon ran aground, his ship scuppered by the lethal combination of an energy crisis, a financial crash and a second miners’ strike in two years.

And though Labour’s Harold Wilson got the country back to work, it came at the price of inflation at almost 30% and a humiliating bailout from the IMF.

Perhaps never before had the political establishment seemed so impotent and irrelevant – little wonder, then, that for the first time in years, emigrants actually outnumbered immigrants.

Sounds just dandy…

OK so I wasn’t on drugs during the 70s (Mr Woppit 😉 ) but I have a pretty good reason for not remembering, I was five! But speaking to my folks it was a pretty dark and miserable time, literally. Reading through most of this thread it sounds like many feel that Thatcher was a bad thing which, considering the length she was PM is not surprising – a lot of what she did was highly controversial.

I’m no political historian, I’m not a Thatcherite and neither am I a socialist so for this reason I found Boris’s speech interesting. When he talks of Thatcher rescuing the UK from a pretty deep shambles one can’t disagree that something was needed and that something was MT. For those who bark loudly about her evils and that of the Conservative party what exactly was the rest of political Britain going to do about it back then? strike? That worked well didn’t it.

In a time of very similar politicians, largely speaking the same language from almost the same side of the fence I find Boris a bit refreshing. I will be very upset if Ed Miliband ever gets in. IMO Labour still have at least another five years of apologising to do. What was it? “We’ve abolished Boom and Bust” Ha, you had no idea what you were doing you bloody loonies…

Who’s worse, Cyclists or motorists?

Haven’t read the whole thread so just stepping in, but answering the OPs question I’d say, on the whole, Cyclists. To put my opinion into perspective I spend about three out of five days doing 100mile round trips into and out of London, during rush hour. Very simply there are some pretty hopeless drivers around but, considering the number of cars, most drive legally and safely. However every single journey, without exception, I see cyclists breaking the rules of the road and taking risks. Just because they can move faster than queuing traffic and fit into small spaces city riders seem to think the rules don’t apply to them. I’m not surprised at all by the number of accidents.

However around the Surrey hills where I live cyclists are very well behaved, it’s daft drivers steaming round corners that are more of a problem. I think it depends on the circumstances and each should be aware of their environment and ride / drive in such a way as to minimise the chance of danger to themselves and other road users.

Of all road bound vehicles by far the worst is the motorbike rider, I’ve never seen such stupidity and of the twenty or so major accidents I’ve seen this year I’d say 75% involved a motorbike. Just last night I spent two hours waiting whilst the air ambulance pealed some poor chap of the M3 right in front of me, I hope he’s OK and it may not have been his fault but another motorbike rider hits the deck… hard. I’m sure some (maybe even most) accidents are caused by four wheeled vehicles but, from what I see, riding a motorbike that way it’s not if, but when. As a motorist during the week the least trouble I see comes from Lorries and buses. They’re big, slow and in the case of buses very colourful. Easy to keep clear of.

IMO of course.

[sits back and expects to get flamed]

I aim to please…

Usually fun mate but mindless commentary like that usually kills what is supposed to be a sensible thread. Although I’d be interested to hear where you think our country would be right now if Maggie hadn’t stepped in? Don’t want to get of track though, like or loath her Maggie was the past. Let’s talk about Boris.

Crikey, I’m glad I asked – it’s a bit of a minefield. I’ve just done the speedcheck and it’s come up with 3.13Mbps download and 0.67Mbps upload (I’m guessing the latter is pretty s***e?).

Not much different to me so don’t worry about it, there’s not much you can do until the line is improved. I’m with Sky and and they do have a fibre option for an extra tenner but this does not offer the super speeds one would expect either.

and comparing speeds between random house is pointless, there will still be a max speed your line can handle

This is very true, changing provider won’t make any difference so IMO not worth the bother. Sky offer a very good deal if you have their TV so might as well stick with it.

If you pop your telephone number in this search it’ll tell you what you should be expecting. On the summary page click on the ADSL tab for your estimate. Mine says 2Mb and I get a bit more than this.

SamKnows

Robhughes the repeaters they’re discussing (and the one you link to) are Illegal. Even if they weren’t as you can only boost the available signal not much likely to happen in a basement flat. You’d need to locate the receiver where a good signal exists and I doubt there’s much access to the outside world. We’ve payed with active versions of these and success is completely dependant on receiving a strong, clear signal. Otherwise you’re just amplifying rubbish.

Such wonderful fun. My face was nearly splitting in two in a grin.

Snap. Then I got into my car for the two hour drive home 😐