I can’t believe its quicker to take a bike to a shop to get a BB changed, than it is to do it yourself. It should only take 10 minutes. Must take longer to take it to the shop ?

I still find this whole idea of paying someone to service a bike totally weird, Its a bike not a BMW.

Did you guys have your bike in for a a 1000miles service when you were a kid ?

I really fear for the country these days, can no one do anything for themselves. When I was a kid if your bike broke you fixed it. If you could not fix it you asked your dad and he helped you fix it.

Are we really a country of morons !!

Learn to dance !!!

No it does not have integrated speakers.

I think you want a logitech boom for that or a logitech radio.

It really is a cool piece of kit.

I guess you might have to hack the linkstation to get root access to it and install the pearl scripts that make up the squeezeserver software. So do-able if your a bit computer savy.

Its the bit of software you need to run on your NAS or a computer to stream your music to the squeezebox devices.

It does some other cool stuff like transcoding audio from one format to another. For instance I have an applet on it the takes youtube video and strips just the audio and sends it to the squeezebox.

Another applet handles spotify so I can listen to that on my squeezeboxes.

But if you don’t run this software you can still do internet radio by connecting to Logitech’s server.

I received my Squeezebox touch yesterday.

Its fantastic I am really pleased with it. I have it doing everything from my music collection on my NAS, Spotify, youtube audio, bbc iPlayer etc.

If you just want internet radio you can get it to talk to the mysqueeze.com on the net and not need to run squeeze server locally

I have a duet on the way for upstairs now.

It does really just work.

The Street Triple R is a great bike. I in fact went in to buy a Speed Triple but the guy persuaded me to ride both. The street was so much lighter. Its pretty much a 600cc sports bike with no fairing and a comfy riding position.

I am really liking the Naked bike thing and as I said really fancy a go on a Tuono.

I passed my test about 13years ago.

First bike was a VFR400 which I liked as you could use all of the power and the handling was superb. I am 5’11 however and after about 6months I got fed up of folding myself on it, it was deffo built for someone smaller than me. But great cornering and you needed to really thrash it to keep up with mates on bigger bike. It was a lot of fun.

So I then ordered a new CBR600F it took ages to arrive and they kept fobbing me off. So I went in one day and in a fit of madness I asked them if I could have the ZX9R they had in stock instead. Initially I thought to my self it was not that quick, then I realised I was short shifting into 6th and riding everywhere in 6th.

But…… not being used to a heavier bike I dropped it in the work car park picking my lid up off the floor and leaning the bike over too much. Really stupid but I was just not used to such a heavy bike.

Had it for 3 years after that and loved it an did many miles on it. It was a de restricted 140BHP model, which was pretty quick in its day. Quite heavy though so you really needed to learn to turn a bike properly if you wanted to ride fast.

Then had a load of other bikes including the must have R1 etc, really enjoyed them.

I then had a bit of a break for a couple of years and then bought a new R6. It was fantastic so light brilliant handling. I initially thought they had forgot to fit the engine coming from bigger bikes. Once I realised you had to wring its neck it was so fast and so much fun. Again had that for a few years before realising I didn’t actually like going anywhere on it as it was so uncomfortable.

So now I have a triumph 675 street triple R and its great. Riding position is great. I also bought it as it did not have a faring so it would keep my straight line speed down. It does and thats good, but can be annoying on the motorway. Again though you do have to spank it to go anywhere so I am considering a bigger naked bike like a Touono V4R but need to ride one first. It might just be too much bike !!!

I am also considering a 1200 Multistrada I hired a R1200GS BMW this summer for two weeks touring in the Alps. I love how comfy it was and how effortlessly it covered miles. Think a Mutley might be similiar but a bit more sporty, but need to test ride.

Back to the OP question about a sports bike as a first bike. My mate is taking his test soon and did his CBT the other day. He hired a 125 for the weekend and we went out for him to practice. It was amazing and I am sure he learnt more than he would have on a quick bike. For a start he did not have to worry about managing his speed going into corners so he could concentrate on lines etc. He also did not want to loose speed that was hard gained. I got a lot out of it too as I followed him and tried to get my lines as spot on as possible, afterwards I went out on my own riding and the improvement was amazing and I have ridden a fair bit over the years.

So I guess I am saying sometimes you need to go slow to go fast :-)

edited to add

God that’s long sorry :-)

Warlock of Firetop mountain, I remember it well. Ground braking at the time.

Edited to add

I tried programming it on my 1K ZX81 and got to about page 3 before I ran out of RAM :-)

Yes I got the pair of headphone too.

They don’t sound too bad apart from the noise transmitted up by the cord.

Just used them while running.

Did any of you order a box blemished Duet and actually get it ?

They ran out of stock before mine was dispatched and could not tell me if they would have any more :-(

They did however give me a voucher for 35% off any other product for my trouble so I ordered a Squeezebox touch instead. So hopefully that should be here later in the week.

About £4500 – £5000 @ around 32MPG

The Apple TV has almost all the features I’d like, but not quite all.

Apple TV with XBMC on it ?

I have just got spotify running on squeezeserver but it does not show any of my play lists of music. I can browse new stuff and top ten etc.

Sorry for the hijack !!!

Sorted had to add the triode repository to the list :-)

I think I am being a bit thick !!!

If I go into the App Gallery I can only see the official plugin. I can’t see any way of installing 3rd part ones.

I am new to this literally just installed the software to have a look before box arrives.

Done a quick google search and its no clear where to get the 3rd party plugin from. Any clues would be welcome.

Just ordered one of those box blemished duets.

This is something I have wanted to get working for a while.

I hope I can get the third party spotify plugin working for it. Have any of you done this ?

Had CCDB on my old Patriot that I used for everything. I loved it, a great shock.

When I was fit it was a superb bike shock combination for everything.

It’s a fair point but again, based on my own experience, those same people who drove their motorbikes like nutters didn’t drive cars in the same way. I reckon motorbikes encourage that behaviour (amongst teens at least) since even crap ones are very quick in comparison to crap cars.

Also to be fair there is a bigger margin for error in a car. I have slid into a verge as a young driver in a car and drove away from it. So sometimes the consequences can be less, same accident on bike I would have at least been bruised.

To be honest apart from the first 15ft from the lights a learner legal 125 is pretty slow. I know as I rode my mates the other day. I remembered them being much faster :-)

I ride with a completely different mindset now to when I was 17. I am not immortal any more :-)

I never had a problem with smell (textile rather than leather jacket probably helped) loseing feeling in my extremities was more of a concern! I used to arrive at school and have to borrow some warm alcohol from the science labs to defrost the locks and get the key out of the ignition!

You never had the problem ;-)

The only answer is to run a banger, learn to fix it himself, and insure it 3rd party only. It was exactly the same when I was learning in ’98, I paid more in insurance per year than I did for the car for the first 2 years. I had a classic 1.1l Pug 205 which cost next to naff all to run and fix. Sure it was a bit beaten up and some panels were different shades of blue, but it was a car and freedom and I loved it just the same.

I remember my silver escort with the red bonnet, I loved that car :-)

I can remember changing the starter motor on it, in the pouring rain in the gutter. My shoulder forming a dam against the water.

Happy days :-)

Times when I have had the most money and the most nice things have not been when I have been the happiest :-)

Motorcycles / scooters are not a particularly cheap option as decent training and protective kit does not come cheap

But you have those skills for life though so not a waste of money like £2K on car insurance !!!

Only problem with a motorbike for all weather transport is in the winter you arrive everywhere smelling like a wet dog :-)

large418

Why not just let him use one of your cars when he is home from Uni as a named driver ?

He will get taken for a ride if he has the car at Uni, he will be the one running everyone around wasting his(your) money. Most of the students will not have cars. So their social life will revolve around not having one so he won’t be left out. Also think of it from a safety point of view the most likely demographic to have an accident are young males with more than 2 people in the car. He will be in this demographic as a student with a car !!!

If he is anything like me or my mates, he will come home a fair bit at weekends initially, then you won’t see him until the holidays (if your lucky) as he will have his own life as a grown up living away from home.

When he graduates he will be 21 more sensible and insurance will be lower. He will also have kept his driving hand in by using your cars when home.

I am honestly not trolling here !!!

What positives is an 8 year old going to get from a social networking site ?

Would it not be better to just do something else with her ?

No way in hell I’d be giving my son a motorbike at 17. I saw what happened to a good proportion of my mates who had them at that age…

Then should you trust him with a car ?

The HP2 looks better without the fairing.

I would like the HP2 in my garage but if you were at the lights next to the S1000RR and watched it disappear you would be thinking why did I pay more money for the HP2 :-)

What is that pieface ? looks like a HP2 with no fairing ?

My father in law has one with a Puma engine tuned to 170bhp and geared specifically for hill climbs – 0-60 <4secs. I want it but have nowhere to store it.

I turbod it to 300BHP and shed some weight after that so still was around 480KG’s

Still reckon a S1000RR would be quicker :-)

I had a few races with bikes in my old Westfield with a Hayabusa engine in it. It weighed 480Kgs and had 180BHP, 0-60 in under 4 secs I could just about keep up with a bandit 600 etc a sports 600 would be quicker.

I would bet money on beating a Corrado anywhere in that car, even with a numpty like me driving.

Fastest I have ridden is a VTR1000 which was feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeching fast, in a straight line, introduce corners and you have to be Rossi to keep up with a quick car.

Throw in a bit of traffic than ANY car is mincemeat on the road :-)

An S1000RR has getting on for double the power of a VTR1000 and 40KG’s lighter.

I agree the fastest cars are faster then the fastest bikes, but the ones most of us can afford to own are not.

I use CrashPlan unlimited and that works well. I have tried pulling stuff back to test it too.

Cheap for unlimited data.

Not sure where most of you lot drive, but I find most people are fine. See the odd poor bit of driving but generally its fine.

I find most car drivers will make an effort to move out the way if they see you. Some just don’t see you and a tiny minority actively block you but they are in the minority.

One of my mates gave me a great bit of advice for riding a bike. He said you don’t need to take a chance overtaking riding a bike as another will come along soon. Its not like in a car where its harder to overtake.

Car drivers also probably are not looking for the right things to see if its safe to filter. A motorcyclist will be looking at gaps that cars can change into etc. A car driver will not be used to looking for this sort of thing and just things the biker is mad.

Gravity dropper with shim in my Hustler.

I have two another in my Cotic Soda, been running them for about 5 years and once you know how to adjust them they are solid and reliable.

I have a Lumie too and as my alarm goes off at 5:30 it does mean in the winter I don’t wake up thinking its the middle of the night still.

As Sam said its a terrible time keeper, but that’s not the end of the world.

If mine died I would buy another one as I do think it works.

aka_Gilo

How are you finding the Tuono, I am thinking of swapping my Street Triple for one early next year.

Like the idea of more power and similar weight ?

Do you have all the fancy electronics on yours ?

I noticed on the BBC this morning that “steps” top the album chart, when music is so crap, what does the format matter.

But you have to realise this is entertainment and not really music. OK it does not float our boat, but for some its fun.

Tip for cleats, just drill out the bolts and use the new plates that come with the cleats !!!

Can’t help other than say its a fantastic place I would love to live there.

I lived in Val D’Isere for a bit and I love the place to bits but recently being visiting Chamonix and I love it.

Fantastic house and I really wanted them to succeed.

To me the views were the wow factor, I would have been happy to live in a tent on that plot :-)