That was the later version of the Honda – the earlier was a very clever CVT design…

My first mountain bike was a Peugeot. It was fluorescent orange…

Heh, wondered if you were the same bencooper… I remember the name from 28dl.

Yeah, I really should use different aliases but I can’t be bothered :-)

The Lotus track bike was actually designed by Mike Burrows, a proper bike designer :-)

I do for my urbex stuff, though it’s not really a proper blog, I’ve just done it in WordPress ‘cos I’m too lazy to do a proper website :-)

http://Www.transientplaces.co.uk

I’ve had a Barmah for many years (in “distressed buffalo”, which always amuses me) – does the job very well, though small children do whistle the Indiana Jones theme…

The BBC are awful at science reporting – I once spent ages on the phone to a BBC “science corespondent” trying to convince him there was a difference between silicon and silicone!

They all seem to have one thing in common. They all seem to want to ignore what everyone else has settled on as working lines for a bike and do something ‘different’. Why!

Because they’re radical, innovative, overpaid car designers who obviously must be better at designing stuff than someone who just designs push bikes for a living.

A few years back, Telewest (for a bit of PR) wanted to have a go at the HPV land speed record attempt, which is held every year at Battle Mountain, Arizona. They hired a bunch of F1 engineers, who obviously know lots more than a bike designer about designing fast bikes, and spent over quarter of a million quid on their machine, and took it to Arizona confident of winning the record.

A bunch of blokes from Canada, who turned up with a machine on the back of a pickup, wiped the floor with them. They got beaten by the women’s team too…

I’ve still got two Daewoo Shuttle folders in the attic – a single speed and a three-speed. Really want an alu one, but they’re impossible to find. That’s a bit different, though – Daewoo make everything, from ships to cars to dishwashers.

Interesting frame design – is the head tube meant to pop off in an impact, like a crumple zone or something?

Car companies don’t make bikes to sell. They don’t care if no-one buys them (and if some uber-fans do, they’re quids in) – they do it as a PR stunt to show how cool and environmentally friendly they are.

And that’s why you’re a physicist, talking about stuff, rather than an engineer, getting it done. Good luck with the spherical chickens.

Touché, though do I get any points for shunning the glamorous world of physics in favour of running a bike shop?

Whereas the Giggs Boson has already been found, but it’s subject to a gagging order so we’re not allowed to talk about it.

I did it through the medium of carved vegetables:

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(is a pumpkin a vegetable?)

It doesn’t. Me talking about economics is like an economist talking about physics, but as I understand it the banks hope that not too many people want to take their money out at the same time. So, theoretically, if only 10% of people want to take their money out, the bank can pretend that they have 10x as much money as they actually do.

You can see how this could go pear-shaped.

That just proves you can get rich by talking convincingly about concepts you don’t understand :-)

I can’t be bothered looking for specific examples, but I definitely remember seeing one economics commentator talking about an event horizon, for example…

Money perhaps used to be a form of energy (you work down t’pit for 12 hours, shifting 10 tonnes of coal, you get a farthing) – now money bears no relation to the effort (energy) required to make it.

As a physicist, I think any attempt to transfer physical principles to economics are bound to fail, and smack of people using cool buzzwords which they don’t know the meaning of.

Sure, no worries – as long as you give it back, unlike another bike shop who will remain unnamed. Swines :-)

33mm hole saw. That’s the trick – it’ll shift almost any stuck cup. Or if it’s a steel axle in a steel cup, I weld the axle to the cup, clamp the axle in the vice, and rotate the entire bike.

There are very few things you can’t fix with an oxyacetylene torch – or make much, much worse :-)

Aye. And once it’s been in for a few years, can’t be removed without dynamite and personal intervention from the Pope.

Nah, there are simple tricks to get them out – I specialise in it. I love it when people bring me a frame with a seized bottom bracket that’s “been to every bike shop in Glasgow and they’ve had it for months” and I get it out in 15 minutes :-)

To go all Luddite, this is why I think square taper is still the best. External bearing systems are hanging the bearing outside the frame, which puts an awful lot of stress on the BB threads, especially as the two sides are independent. A square taper cartridge BB is so solid it can be held in with a plastic cup…

I’m not sure how you could incorrectly fit a BB to do that. If it had been cross-threaded than for one it would have been very stiff, and for another it would be stuck in, not falling out. It looks more to me as if it’s been ridden loose.

Have you thought that it might have nothing to do with your bike but the fact you’re not wearing a helmet?
When I see someone mountain biking without one I don’t give them the time of day, whoever they are or whatever they ride.

I suppose that might have something to do with it – are people so safety-obsessed that they get all think-of-the-children over what other adults chose to do? I thought it was the bike – maybe it is the lack of helmet, knee and elbow pads, gloves, padded shorts and spine protector.

I’ve been riding mountain bikes from before all that stuff was invented – really don’t see the need to start now, but everyone makes their own choices. Compared to other things I get up to, mountain biking is relatively safe. It’s all about knowing and managing risks.

But this is off the subject. I’m not fussed if people buy expensive bikes and can’t ride them very well – as long as they’re enjoying themselves, who am I to judge?

That’s a bit of a sweeping generalisation…

If anything, I find it’s the opposite – at least I always seem to get dirty looks whenever I turn up at Glentress with my old GT RTS, no helmet and ripped jeans.

Natural magnetic field and natural radiation our bodes can deal with
But the man made shit is a serious no no.
Thought that was common knowledge ?

Common knowledge, maybe. Corrrect knowledge, no.

Hopefully the dustbin that it’s parked next to was its final resting place.

Nope, I had fun with it, then it went off to Yorkshire somewhere. Though he wussed out and put gears on it…

Offroad singlespeed recumbenting. You know it makes (no) sense…

I normally tell people to bring bikes back for a (free of course) first check-over after 100 miles or so. Really, I pulled that number out of my head with no real logic behind it :-)

Ride it enough to bed stuff in, not so much that stuff is beginning to wear out.

Honestly, I can’t see it mattering much either way – Sometimes being airtight makes condensation worse, as temperature changes lead to pressure changes. Really, though, just make sure the seatpost is greased.

It’s not quite free power – some people have been done for rigging up a cable under overhead power lines to get “free” energy :-)

The only proven effect of EMF is to heat things up. So worst case you’ll save a bit on heating bills.

When I build bikes with them, I always run the cables all the way up under the tape – with good cables, the extra bends don’t matter much, it’s neater and less likely to snag on things.

This video shows the cars – plus with added screaming small child content :-)

I’ve tried the Great Orme one – this looks amazing…

The rear is indexed – the front isn’t, but you can see what that’s doing and it means you can fine-tune it. Advantages are they’re light, simple, and you can change lots of gears quickly. They’re also not that far away from your hands really.

I use them a lot on recumbents – fantastic things.

Not my pic:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/assemblylinecollective/2909441848/

It’s basically a dog clutch on the freewheel – quite basic, but works :-)

I thought the ipad was a stupid idea, until I eventually got one. The bigger screen makes a lot of things easier, for a start – movies are nicer to watch, the keyboard is much easier to use, web browsing is much better when you don’t have to zoom in all the time.

But it’s the stuff that just wouldn’t work on a small device which is really cool – simple things like Heatpad which my daughter loves (it’s like a heat-sensitive screen), Sim City works very well, and for work I can get the full screen of my online order system on-screen at once.

It’s not a laptop replacement, and some things about it are extremely annoying, but for what it’s built for it’s very good.

Gradings are fun – at least my KSW ones are, so I presume TKD will be too. Though, when I say fun, I mean that special kind of fun that’s absolute hell until it’s all over :-)

In my cabinet of curiosities, I’ve got an original, unused Fixfree Drive – it’s a hub which you can swap from fixed to free with a lever on the handlebars…

You can’t be racist to a nation either.

Isn’t it racist to assume that the Scots would find this funny?

If you can live with it falling off, use alloy – otherwise use steel. Also beware of alloy-on-alloy bonding – they can seize completely solid…