I really shouldn’t look at this thread when I have a bit of spare money. Relapsed Mandalorian has cost me £170 though I do have a nice space shuttle now.

How do people display their models? I have a couple of the technics ultimate car models (911 and Chiron) and now the shuttle. They occupy any spare flat space I can find in the house and eventually I’m going to run out. I’d like to get the other ultimate car models, just not sure where I’d put them!

I swapped an old GP5000 for a new one recently. Couldn’t get the new one to seat (with a track pump) until I stuck another layer of tubeless tape on, then it was easy.

Had a go with mine today. Using warma pizza pellets it was easy enough to get up to 400c, I think if I’d kept shovelling them in I could have got it to 500. Cooked pizzas in about 90s though with one turn in the middle. Works great.

@dantsw13 where did you get the hardwood from? Impulse bought one of these yesterday and wondering the best way to fuel it.

We have an osprey poco. It’s great and I could wear it all day. 2 year old loves it – it’s much better for wandering around the zoo and stuff as he can see properly. Even tolerates the sunshade and raincover.

I find my Garmin runs out pretty quick when following a route, simple solution seems to be switch away from the map screen when I’m on a long section without any turns (although it does still mostly pop up turn by turn instructions).

@stwhannah I am curious:

https://take.quiz-maker.com/poll4803470x4aF24ED1-149

We found kids post nursery play/bath/bed was pushing our main meal well after 8pm. As we wfh a lot we moved ‘dinner’ to the middle of the day, usually around 12.30 / 1pm. This has meant that I can now get out at 7pm for some exercise without needing food, and that takes me nicely to a light tea when I get back.

I’m just impressed that you get stuck, then go down for another shot! First time there a year ago I cleaned it no problem. Have not managed it since. I blame that slippery root that blocks the obvious route up.

I’m a big fan of a Brodit proclip – preferably the ones that clamp to the car rather than clipping into an air vent. Expensive, but solid. They usually mount to the a pillar so nicely in the corner out of the way.

We have the same problem. Paid xp per mile if it’s an electric car, but that doesn’t cover fast chargers. For a lot of the team that’s a huge pain as we can be all over the country. Company car policy mandates electric vehicles. The solution for me is to not use the company car scheme, take car allowance instead. This way I just about break even on the mileage allowance (but also own the car so am quids in per month on the car allowance).

I have a 65 plate Mazda 6. Had from new, done 85k miles. Zero problems except the infotainment system started playing up. EBay replacement for £100 sorted that.

It drives great (2.2 diesel). Nippy when you put your foot down. Goes round corners well.

Inside is a lovely place to be. Spacious front and back. I bought the CarPlay upgrade so nav and media is excellent. Stereo is great. Boot is enormous, though with a young family the saloon boot is not particularly useful once you’ve stuffed a pram in it.

I’d gladly have another one. Especially over a boring German option.

Our 4 year old has been a bit awkward in the week for a while. We’ve always had snacky food around for keeping the kids going after nursery, and she’s learned that if she constantly complains about being hungry as soon as she gets home, she gets fed lots of snacks. We put an end to it by offering ‘dinner lite’. Cheese wrap, small beans on toast etc. She has three meals at nursery plus healthy snacks so doesn’t (usually) need another full meal but does sometimes need more than a small snack. This was a good compromise, I don’t mind binning some beans or an uneaten slice of toast, I do mind spending a fortune on snacks or binning 90% of a roast dinner. We eat our dinner later after the kids are in bed.

When she was younger she would refuse to eat meals, it turned out our healthy snack portions between meals were too big. We cut down on those, then the odd time she’d refuse to eat something we stuck it in the fridge and got it back out when she next said she was hungry. Sometimes she would moan a bit then eat it, others she would be distraught (and some things are not nice cold or reheated) and we would suck it up and give something else.

All the advice these days seems to be around developing a healthy relationship to food, teaching the kids from when they start weaning that there are lots of options, they don’t have to eat stuff they don’t like. But it’s a balance between that and getting them to eat a varied and healthy diet as they get older which becomes tricky at times.

Why not hire one? We’ve got a rented (cheap) treadmill for £14 a week for 8 weeks, if we hate it then we aren’t stuck with it.

What you get is the tax back on the difference. If the difference is £2800 you’ll need to do a self assessment and you’ll get 20% back. They will then adjust your next years tax code so you pay less tax.

Not sure how that works with doing several years worth of claims though.

For why it’s worth I’ve been doing this several years, the first year I was under £2500 so did the p87 and waited about 6 months for a cheque. Following years I was over so self assessed, it takes me about 30 mins to do and I get paid within 7 days.

Only pain was as they adjust your tax code so you pay less tax (and therefore get a smaller or no payout in subsequent years) when covid hit and my mileage dropped off a cliff I ended up underpaying tax and owing about grand.

I have most of a dismantled trek x caliber 8 (frame, wheels, fork, bar, and 12speed SX eagle drivetrain) I’d be willing to donate. You would just need to find seatpost, bb and brakes I think. Based near Chester.

With shell following a house move. No issues except the lacklustre response on the couple of occasions the smart meter has stopped communicating. First was electric and gas, second was gas only. No help either time, essentially ‘sorry we can’t do anything because it’s not communicating with us’. Not too sure that is their problem specifically but they don’t cover themselves in glory with their customer support.

We moved last year 6 months before the fixed rate expired. Got a SVR additional borrowing to go with it, then moved both to a fixed rate 6 months after the move. Very painless, broker dealt with it all admirably.

Ring Pro (or elite?) doorbell used to have the option of PoE. They work fine, but you need a solid strong wireless signal otherwise there is loads of lag. Guess PoE would get around that. We have a ring wireless chime and it’s essentially instant ring when someone presses the doorbell, with phone notification coming in maybe a second or two later. In our old house with poor wireless to the front door, sometimes the chime would be 15-20s behind the button press, and phone notification behind that.

My almost four year old nicked my bike light as soon as it got dark on the way to/from nursery last year. Got spinning wheel light things for Christmas, loves them. Not sure speeds are high enough for falls to be particularly bad, she wears woollen gloves if it’s chilly, some bigger thinsulate ones if really cold (below zero). Had a few offs, no hand issues, scraped knees but nothing worse than normal toddler scrapes.

Ref not being interested, we put the balance bike away as soon as the pedal bike arrived, she was all for the new bike until she rode it first time, after that the pedals came off for about 3 months until a bit of persuasion got them back on, was then a couple of rides getting the hang of it and she hasn’t looked back since.

Insured with Barclays, think max per bike is 5k but you tell them your most expensive bike and they’ll cover all of them up to that value. Was about £120 for the year I think.

I did also have insulation rammed right into the eaves blocking up the venting there, pulling that back did help a bit but it was the lap vents that cleared the issue.

Had this problem in my last house, fitted a handful of those plastic vents along each side of the roof and problem solved.

If you use office at work you can likely download the latest version of 365 from portal.office.com and sign in with your corporate credentials to activate it. I think typically you can activate on 5/6 machines.

Have an Olight S15R baton which is palm sized and brilliant. And a new Olight Warrior mini 2 which is a bit brighter on every setting and like a mini sun on ‘turbo’ – it’s also slightly bigger than palm sized with some kind of ridged rim for getting up close and personal with any zombies, cabinet members etc.

@binners it’s never too early for a kebab unless it’s before midday. Though tbf my local does a thing called a doner and curly wrap (yep that’s a doner kebab with curly fries in it as well). It’s massive, and epic, and I could eat it for breakfast.

Isn’t a kebab always post pub food of choice? Would take a bit of advance prep but I made this yesterday and could definitely demolish after a few beers/ late night: https://www.tamingtwins.com/slow-cooker-doner-kebab/

Thanks all. Looking wired only, probably closed back but the wife has my noise cancelling Bose now so open might be ok.. Definitely don’t want the Grado though, they get good reviews but are on ear :(

Looks like a toss up between the AT M50x or AKG – I like the sound of the Rødes but they aren’t reviewed quite so well.

Last cartridge I bought from Analogue Seduction. Bonus points for it showing up on the card statement (next to Five Guys and Dirty Dicks) as ANAL SEDUCTION.

Looks like the stylus you want is £30 there though.

Is it the lifeline ant+ dongle?

Try following this guide to get it going:

https://support.wahoofitness.com/hc/en-us/articles/360021559679-Installing-ANT-drivers

Pick an area of focus, networking, security, systems etc then focus on that. Cloud seems fairly in demand from what I see (AWS, Azure).

For networking everyone loves a CCNA and that would get you in the door for entry level support.

Security is quite a broad topic and while you could look at traditional networking vendors security certifications, there’s a whole lot more to it than that.

You could get a sub to something like pluralsight for training videos on a whole range of topics.

I started out with no certs, entry level support position and chose a direction from there. Since then it’s been the experience employers have valued with less of an emphasis on certifications.

Right click on the start button (I think) and open device manager. That’s sort of like the system report on the mac, will flag up any attached devices that are unknown or have driver issues. If either Bluetooth or the ant dongle show up in there with an exclamation mark, right click and update driver, try using the search option which will use windows update. If that fails go to the manufacturer website and find the appropriate driver.

I had an x caliber 8 which was under a grand but the fork was very basic. It was ‘fine’. Frame, fork and wheels are sat unused now…

Music, at least when I was at school was very focused around orchestral type stuff. It’s easy to throw 15 kids with violins together and produce something decent. Lots of the scores played are written for that. I can’t imagine there is much that caters for 5 kids on drums, 7 guitar etc.

For us, music branched out way more at A levels, more variety, more modern stuff, writing your own music etc.

If there’s interest in music at school (or it’s a requirement) I’d be picking an instrument that is vaguely interesting and then doing private lessons outside school for something you actually want to learn.

The biggest issues is the devices will likely hang on to the network they are connected to until they physically cannot connect anymore. If you don’t wander around it’s likely not too much of an issue.

Cool thanks guys!

I think from a value perspective, as far as cycle solutions are aware, you’ve bought a 3k bike. All other payments/ values are based on this amount.

When you reach the end of the year, you are given the option to either buy the bike for a set percentage of the original value/ loan amount, or extend the loan for a lower set percentage (7% iirc). Once you’ve extended the loan there are no further payments to make. You can also at that point get another voucher for another bike if you so desire.

Thanks all, lots of options to look at there!

Only problem with relying on reflective strips is i like to see where I’m going too.

We found our maxi cosi baby seat on the isofix base wouldn’t fit properly behind me in smaller cars, but when belted in would just about fit. The next size seat up was a pain so in my wife’s car I’d just never move the drivers seat back and suck up a bit of discomfort. We also moved into the next size up a bit early and got a joie spin so had the forward facing option from about 15 months – that solved the problem on shorter journeys.

Now eldest is in a high back booster problem is solved (age 3).

Saw this recipe a year or so ago and been using it since:

Essentially a little cornflour and water mix, add the eggs, add chopped butter, fry. Comes out delicious.