Marrow Rum!

(really don’t try it, waste of good rum.)

ouch, that must have sucked pretty bad.

great unmapped singletrack out there

Except if you go on the “explore” function on Strava, you can see an awful lot of it – that said, I find it hard enough remembering where stuff is, and finding it again once you’ve ridden it can be a real challenge.

as Graham Wheeler puts it in his book (or close enough) – when boiling wort there is no need for control, there is only one speed needed and it is full throttle.

If you think it takes a long time with 6.5 litres – try 30, I despair every time I burn out a kettle element mid brew (always mid-brew) and have to run my boiler with just one – adds another hour to the whole operation I’m sure.

I’ve never used one, but looking at reviews suggests the latency is at usable levels.

That one won’t do microphones – you are correct the levels/impedances are not compatible.

For a cheap quick a dirty recording, it will do the job well – classic behringer quality*.

If you want microphone and guitar – for the same price you could get one each of the T-bone cheapy XLR/1/4″ Jack cable -> USB things from Thomann –

*in a world where quality means usable but virtually disposable.

My facebook suggests South Essex is flooding quite seriously – which is nice as I moved away over a year ago – friends are posting lots of videos of the seafront flooding.

Stafford is nice and dry, the kids and I did 11.5Km earlier, good work for a 6 year old and an 8 year old.

Another vote for metal machine music by Lou Reed as well as; Reload – Metallica & 10,000 Days – Tool.

From here.

Completely agree with John_Drummer above – I’ve had my beers tasted by the like of Oz Clarke (the less said about his review of my wine the better) and he said that home brewers can easily give the big boys a run for their money if this is what they are brewing – if you love beer, brewing it yourself is an excellent way to get exactly what you like.

Do you really want a “closed” design? or a semi-open design? proper closed cans will warm your ears pretty quick and can be more uncomfortable than is bearable over a long period of time (unless someone is paying you to wear them…) where as a semi-open design will allow more air in and out (and more sound) and is more comfortable.

Coke can stove

Yes, done in summer and winter, all easy going, you can scramble the crest or just walk down the path to the side on Y Gribin.

I have the same fork – I didn’t really look up much before tweaking, so this is a rough and ready non-technical, and possibly wrong guide:

Air:
I tweaked the air by riding it – it was a little spongy, and I’m a fat knacker, so I put more air in – towards the top end of the range for my weight.

Rebound:
When I rode it, I tweaked the hare/tortoise control until the suspension was expanding at the right kind of pace for my riding. It seemed obvious to me that it was too slow when I slowed it down, so I started at the tortoise end, then moved it until riding over bumpy bits seemed efficient at the speed I ride.

The Car and The Kitten

In word 2007 (I don’t have it to hand) it might be called something like ISO 690 – and probably have two variants (round and square brackets off the top of my tedious head).

If this isn’t the case, then someone has created an appropriate XML file to do it here: http://bibword.codeplex.com

I personally don’t bother with the built in ref manager for word, and prefer to use Zotero – https://www.zotero.org because it has better library creation and management, which suits my researching style better.

start on follow the dog, because you have to start on it which ever trail you do (the blue is a nice relaxing ride, but my wife could do it on her Pashley Princess…) then if you feel confident then turn off to do the Monkey, it’s pretty straight forward, there are options to avoid the hardest parts, and even then, the more difficult bits are easy to walk over due to the fact they are short – if you don’t fancy it, then do a couple of loops of Follow the dog, or turn off an explore the chase.

top of Nicki’s leap at Vivian Quarry.

Pics of my gear and trip/fail here: http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/have-a-go-hero-tries-lakeland-200-and-fails

I didn’t think about the Grizedale Bike shop – the quote was from a bloke in an outdoor shop in Coniston.

I can recommend the recipes in this book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Home-Brew-Doug-Rouxel/dp/1862058822 – mainly because I wrote them all.

What sort of recipe are you looking for? I’ve got quite a few about, and can recommend a host of good books on recipe design.

The ones I’ve used, and would use again:

http://www.highland-hostel.co.uk
http://www.bankstreetlodge.co.uk

The latter is probably better for bikes, in that it’s not in Ft William town centre, there are lots of other options round that way – Culluna, Paddy’s Racist bunk house etc. etc.

And I’m not sure I’d be moving without ropes in what appears to be soft snow

Grade II like that, it’s normal to Solo in winter – keeps you moving faster and ensures that one person falling isn’t two people falling – I think the only time I’ve ever put in enough protection to stop me proper in winter is on climbs of Grade III and above – certainly almost never on I/II.

Looking at the ice around, it the conditions don’t look too bad (for Wales) and he should have had a good enough platform to fend off the lump of ice coming down, even if he didn’t if he had pulled into the slope, as opposed to leaning out, his axes would have been digging in already to slow him, rather than flailing about…

In a hot smoker with Hickory lump wood at about 101 deg C for 5 or so hours, making sure the internal temperature is over 60deg C, maybe rub it with Garlic and a couple of oxo cubes before it goes in.

So, what’s Wrong/Right; Good/Bad?

The wall could do with re-pointing, particularly the bit in the second shot.

It’s a Bobbin birdie, SHMBO wants one.

http://instagram.com/p/WfbUpkOr8j/

Surely this is due to the ‘cheeky’ nature of the starting points of these centres? the trees hide a multiplicity of sins – e.g. Cannock chase is not just somewhere you can ride your bike, it has history as a dogging site as well – both because you can avoid being seen there.

This, and riding a bike requires, as a starting point, some kind of path, this is either going to be a footpath (but this leads to more conflict) or a deer track, which is less likely to – deer also live in the woods…

I’ve stayed at Bank Street Lodge in fort William many times over many years, pretty cheap and it’s a bunk house, so showers, midge free, won’t flood and doesn’t involve tents and does have a pretty good drying room.

I think it’s worth quoting Lito Tejada-Flores at this point, in his essay “the Games Climbers Play” he outlines at climbing (or in this case mountain biking) is in fact not one homogenous sport:

Climbing is not a homogeneous sport but rather a collection of differing (though) related activities, each with its own adepts, distinctive terrain, problems and satisfactions, and perhaps most important, its own rules. Therefore, I propose to consider climbing in general as a hierarchy of climbing- games, each defined by a set of rules and an appropriate field of play.

The confusion comes in biking because there is the assumption that are divisions are along the lines of road biking and mountain biking – downhill and XC etc. etc. but it’s more than that and Lito’s analysis of climbing goes into this. Even if you ride trail centres on a similar type of bike, there are people that ride them one way, playing one game, and others who ride them another, playing a different game. Success in each case depends on different factors. They are however factors which can be consistent with other players, the variables are not infinite, and in fact it is the fact that people confuse another player as playing the same game as them, that discussions like this start, and continue.

Is it MTB are really lazy when it comes to filing out surveys

I think the survey thing is pretty universal – of my students, I would guess that a survey monkey type approach will get 10x the number of responses to an e-mail or traditional paper filling approach – that said, not all questions can be put properly in a survey monkey type system, and the data isn’t always ‘better’ overall, and they need to learn more about cleaning the data up to make it relevant for drawing conclusions upon.

Our 6yo has gears on Jamis X20, she’s not a massively confident bike rider and she doesn’t really like them/understand the concept – trying to explain that although your legs are going fast it doesn’t mean the bike is going faster seems to be a step too far for her, and I’ve basically left it as it is, in a middle gear and she is happy with it and leaves it alone – however, she’s at the bottom of the size range for the bike, and getting better all the time, so will, by the time she gets to the top size of the bike, be much more inclined to use them i’m sure.

I would recommend it, and regularly do recommend it to my students.

The only downside I see, as a lecturer, is that some students lose a little bit of focus on the rest of their studies, if they know they have a job lined up already – but this is on a student by student basis, not universal, but it has been the case that I think they could have got a better classification than they do.

Depends where you are as to how competitive the other parties are – there has never been a time in history when smaller parties were as competitive as they are now, there are councils in the country out of Red/Blue/Yellow control, there are MP’s from outside the Red/Blue/Yellow groups and so on.

I’ve never voted for a winning candidate (but then I regularly stand as a candidate) and have only ever voted for Labour (or any major party) once, in a straight Labour/tory vote in the police crime commissioner elections – even then, Labour lost.

You can buy short gaiters – ankle gaiters they are normally called – they are generally not designed for stopping water getting in though, more for stopping gravel and snow getting in your boots out walking – the DIY suggestions above sound like a better bet than commercial ankle gaiters.

Better still, abolish political parties, they emphasise ideology and power dynamics over managing the country for the benefit of the people. Just an apolitical management committee, voted in for a fixed term.

you say this as though it would exist in some kind of objective vacuum – your suggestion has attached to it a very specific ideological position, I’m sure you will deny this is the case, but it’s true.

Any management committee (or civil servant, as they are known in this country) would need a set of parameters to work within in order to make the decisions you are talking about, and there are no objectively right answers, you need to decide who you **** over, that’s why there are politicians in the first place.

In terms of power dynamics, far from political parties emphasising power dynamics, if you visit places without political parties, then you can see that politics then becomes the preserve of the already powerful, because only they have the ability to present themselves effectively to the electorate and get elected – without a party to help you, getting elected as a normal person is bloody hard work if you have no money.

I challenge anyone to post a convincing argument to vote Labour or Conservative right now.

Absolutely spot on – same goes for Lib Dems – however, other political parties are available.

UKIP policy as it stands would require that we pull out of the UN – I can’t see that being a good idea in the long run – we would join a list of three countries (Kosovo, The Vatican and Taiwan) which are not members…

There are no good phone/broadband providers.

Slaters Top Totty.

I go to Guernsey about once a year on average to see family, Condor Ferries is your only option, it’s expensive if you go on the fast ferry (2.5 hours to Guernsey, longer to Jersey) and quite expensive if you go on the slow ferry (over night back, all day there). I’d look at flying/hiring as it might come in cheaper overall for 3 of you. (I have 3 kids, and it’s not cheaper for me, that and I don’t fly).