What is the pass mark? At undergrad, 58/100 is a 2.2 – but it’s a bare pass at Masters where I am – still recoverable to get a good overall mark (merit etc.) but it will take work.

The important thing to do is look at your feedback and the problems with the first assignment with a view to transferring as much of the feedback as possible on to the next assignment – even if it’s on something different entirely, you need to know what it was, generally, that you did wrong. Did you fully answer the question, did you coherently present your arguments, were your conclusions supported by the evidence you supplied – that sort of thing is essential stuff – and make sure you try not to make the same broad mistake again.

The extra room for logos etc is a coincidence

Skin tight clothing means the logo shape is held better, giving better brand recognition – the sponsors would surely be arguing for tighter, less flappy clothes to facilitate this in the photos rather than flappy clothes where the logo’s deform and become difficult to identify.

The “recumbents are slow uphill” thing. I’ve analysed this quite a bit, and there are a few reasons for it:[truncated]

Fair enough – sounds interesting.

I think that the broader question of why is it that the UCI has such a tight grip on the whole thing is perhaps worth exploring – formula 1 (and the very specific rules it imposes) doesn’t hold back innovation in utility cars – so does the UCI hold back innovation in utility bikes – the answer has to be no, bromptons wouldn’t pass muster, for example – but go beyond, in some ways, the 2 triangles etc. the problem is not that the UCI holds back innovation, it’s that it stifles the awareness of the array of other stuff on offer – to most people, F1 is motor sport, and TdF is cycle sport, but both are much much bigger – and it would be interesting to see more of that wider array of stuff. Motor sport seem to have a slightly better approach with a wider number of games within the sport getting at least half decent support – but cycling is way behind on that score.

650b wheels make the trails come alive.

There is no reason why 1100 lumens is to bright or dazzling to other road users, the lumens output of the lamp alone doesn’t tell us much about the brightness of a light overall – the optics will dictate how dazzling those 1100 lumens are – tightly focussed it won’t help much, and it may well dazzle other road users, spread out across the road, then it’s less likely to dazzle, and will be more useful to a cyclist trying to identify the edge of the road and pot holes – although I tend to find a big difficulty on narrow roads is seeing where you are going when a car comes the other way and dazzles you.

Was really worth posting a quote and a picture to prove your a pedantic gobshite? Your life..I mean your actual life must be very dull.

In your first sentence, you need an “it” in there somewhere at the start to make it make sense, and at the end of the first sentence it is “you’re” not “your”.

for almost all road racing, recumbents would be faster and safer, even without fairings.

Stage road racing in general is lost and won in the mountains – the tour of Oman being and excellent example of this last week – one hill in the whole race, basically, and the first person to the top of it (Froome) won the whole GC – despite Greipel taking 3 stage wins.

Yet, Recumbents are generally considered to be no faster, or perhaps even less fast once you put them up the kind of steep gradients that stage road racing goes over – and where the races are lost and won – so whilst they might be faster for all road racing, they wouldn’t offer any advantage to the bit of road racing that makes the biggest difference, so why bother changing?

Socks must be no higher than the mid-point between the ankle and the knee.

If they didn’t have this rule, just think, the whole world would end up looking like this:

I’ve had a pretty good year so far – lots of good rides, fairly good weather for Jan/Feb and the floods look to be subsiding round here, meaning it must nearly be spring.

Crystal and chocolate with target and goldings says traditional bitter to me – you could do anything from a mild through to a best or beyond depending on home much you put in.

900mm bars, 1×12 electronic shifting, 30″ wheels only for Scafell.

I love my Garmin Edge 200, easily the best bike toy I’ve bought, if nothing else it’s saved me hours standing around looking at maps wondering which way I go at this junction.

The biggest payout from mine came from loans that were used to pay off loans – only the original loan had PPI, but I ended up with a wedge for the second one as well because that was used to pay of the initial one.

Plagiarism issues – you want Turnitin – my students submit everything online through this, and they are allowed multiple re-subissions until the deadline to iron out any plagiarism issues (doesn’t always help, I had to haul someone over the coals for it the other day) this is paid for at an institutional level, and not all tutors are good enough with computers to set it up in a useful way – ours is done through the virtual learning environment we use (Blackboard). If this isn’t something that the course/tutor/university use, then you can try writecheck.com – does the same thing, but charges the students, there is the option to extend it to get tutoring on essays through there as well. I feel that some kind of basic plagiarism checking system is a must for most essay based courses nowadays, and I have less cases of plagiarism since I started using it.

Citations and the like – MSWord will do this in house – http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/word-help/create-a-bibliography-HA010067492.aspx

It works, but I personally don’t like it for writing – I use Zotero:

http://www.zotero.org

Which takes a little setting up, but saves a lot of time – particularly with the browser integration and scraping for the reference content, allowing you to build a citation library very easily, it also manages change in referencing style very well – if you need to submit something as Harvard one place and APA another, it’s a godsend.

The guide above is pretty good – I think there are bits in there you can almost certainly get away with not having – I didn’t use anything to stiffen mine and there are no issues with it. I did put the zip too high making it harder to use, but not impossible – put it below the top edge of the bag.

Mine used straps and buckles not velcro, velcro is probably better.

I used water repellent cotton from here: http://www.abakhan.co.uk/fabric/multi-purpose.html?p=2

Made a frame bag and a handlebar harness from a couple of metres worth, looking at doing a top tube mini-bag from the leftovers.

I think there is a wider discussion to be had about political culpability in this – although Monbiot is a bit of a dick a lot of the time (and I speak as a political fellow traveller) he has some interesting stuff to say on the matter here: http://www.monbiot.com/2014/02/17/muddying-the-waters/

Which is worth looking at – deregulation of soil control measures on a crop/growing regime which is known to cause flooding? Surely not this government.

Sorry for the delay –

Handlebar Harness

Frame Bag

Let me know if you have any questions, I made them myself – hence the crappy stitching in most places.

The frame bag is generally pretty waterproof, the stitches obviously let in water, but you need to submerge it to really make it do it, and I’m thinking about taping the seams to stop it.

I do other stuff to supplement my day job – freelance writing, mixing, mastering etc. but it’s not easy, and it’s still a complete pain in the neck, and only really pays peanuts. The only thing that was good on the cash/effort stakes was writing a full blown book on a commercial basis – 6 weeks work in the evenings on top of my normal job and it still pays me twice a year a few years later – the returns are diminishing down to less than £500 a year now, but it start out much higher, and given the short amount of time it took me to write, the £5000 or so I’ve made from it is a good return – better than I could have got on anything else.

We have a self installed Aga Little Wenlock, flue liner and the like, only ever get black stains on the window when wood burns touching it, these clear after a few minutes of burning with nothing on the window, this is mainly burning builders offcuts at the moment.

Handlebar harness and frame bag both home made, saddle bag just an alpkit dry bag strapped on to the bike.

I made a template for the frame bag and guessed at the widths I wanted (flares from narrow at the bottom to wider at the top, I think 70mm at the widest part off the top of my head.)

The harness has a pair of straps to hold it to the handlebars and then one to go round the stem to hold it in place and stop it bouncing.

Got all the fabric, straps and clips from Azkaban – https://www.abakhan.co.uk pretty good supplier on the cheap, and the fabric (water repellant cotton on there) is very good – no issues, some slight wear from the bottle cage bolts, but I’ve switched them out and covered the holes with Sugru. It wasn’t easy to sew the strapping to the fabric so that it was secure (I wrapped the fabric round the strap) but a denim needle and playing with tension etc. sorted it. I started using super strong cotton, but ended up using normal stuff and doing multiple passes – some of the sewing is not pretty, but it’s held out fine so far.

Can post better images if you like.

The only reason to go 650b is that it makes the trails come alive, but every time you ride a 650b with 26″ wheels, then another trail dies right beneath you.

You would have to somehow get a smaller tyre inside your main tyre to do that – this would then cause problems getting two separate beads to seat in the same wheel and the weight penalty doesn’t even bear thinking about. I’d probably not bother…

There’s no real ‘last year’s model’ marketing to be had in the brewing industry, is there?

That’s very true – once you are set up with brewing kit, then it’s just sundries, unless you want to upscale to bigger volumes, but that’s rare really, most people are fine with 5 gallons, and it’s not much more trouble to double brew, and you then get 2 different types of beer!

Are there any Homebrew equivalents to Chain Reaction

Not really – the only ones that I’ve been aware of over the last few years haven’t done so well, the most popular and reliable tend to be offshoots of LBSs – with the exception of Barley Bottom which is not a local brew shop, but it is a one man band type affair.

I don’t think there is the scale in the UK market to support something like CRC – a quick look over the “big” websites and you will see it restricted to pretty much kit beers, rather than anything more substantial.

Any ideas for lifting a full FV out of a chest freezer? Or should I build a cupboard like Trout’s?

I use a cheap old fridge (£10 off ebay) to regulate temperature – the controls for the fridge and a heat mat are on a fish tank heat controller, they switch on and off to maintain whatever temp I set, very useful.

It’s a +1 on the starsan front here was well – really worth making the switch, once you get over the initial price it’s actually pretty cheap as well because it lasts so long.

I’d also add get a bottling tree if you are going to bottle in any quantity (10gal brew lengths and above) saves me no end of time, and the foam from the starsan stays in the rinser.

The sound like feedback is feedback – it’s the disc and the needle vibrating in sympathy with the speaker output and feeding back – this is why record players are often placed on heavy non-vibrating surfaces (I used to carry round 2 paving slabs to solve the issue at free parties)

Are they plugged into a proper phono input? there is a filtering and pre-amp process needed for vinyl.

I think you probably do need an earth, is there a little screw in doodad on the back of the turntable which will take a spade connector?

This is the kind of situation that employers have grievance procedures to solve.

There should be some kind of formal process which allows mediation to take place between the parties to allow the company to move forward – this is easiest done on a “no fault” basis, so that the work can get done.

On the rare occasions that HR people aren’t idiots, it can work very well, however, it is often used as a starting point for disciplinary action (once the required information has been passed on) very often for the more junior colleague.

Anything with a spout which doesn’t pour perfectly.

Anything you stick on a hob with handles which get hot.

The living wage is only happening in places where people are deciding to implement it – Derby Council is one of the first non-london places to implement it, with a limited number of private sector employers implementing it.

It’s a good thing, but it’s only a start.

If you are *in* Fort William, then the Grog and Gruel is your best bet, after that, then a curry house, or bed.

Lots of nicer places to drink once you go in most other directions out from Ft William.

Surely you would glue it in with wood glue, then filler the ends to tidy it up smooth to the rest of the door with the filler.

Blimey, that does look dry compared to the rest of the country.

The area does seem to avoid the worst of the weather – being in the middle of the country has it’s advantages.

Its NOT an RMT strike !

The RMT and the TSSA are both on strike, it is an RMT strike, as well as being a TSSA strike.

I think anyone who has access to the public transport system available to people in London needs to wind their neck in and be thankful for what they have got, because it’s a darn sight better than the vast majority of the population, tube strikes or no tube strikes.

I think it’s interesting how the media are playing the strikes – they are not reporting on the fact that the ongoing industrial action will affect commuters on the tube on the on 7th, 10th and 14th February 2014 between 09.30 and 11.30 hours and 18.30 and 20.30 hours – when the RMT will cease collecting or enforcing fines – because thats of benefit to commuters personally, they leave that out…as though there is a wider anti-union agenda to the reporting, not just reporting the information as it is.

If it’s collusion like that then both sides get in trouble.

The best advice is to do homework for kids at other schools, then their disciplinary processes don’t apply to you, only the person you do the work for.

It does it a lot more than a PR system based on party lists

There is more to PR than just party lists – none the less, FPTP wouldn’t enable you to get rid of the person either, because the vast majority of constituencies in the UK have a natural vote for one of the two main parties – so even if you do vote against, in Surrey or Essex, where they would vote for a donkey in a blue rosette, they would still end up in parliament – because even thought they might not get elected near you, they have the party contacts to secure a nomination elsewhere.

The real answer in this context doesn’t actually come from voting systems – it’s much more about involvement in politics. If we expect sticking an x in a box every 4 years to deliver a fair system of governance then we are deluding ourselves.

The real answer is better involvement in the organisations which are the real decision makers – the parties themselves – become a member, vote in elections, stop idiots getting power internally – in which ever party.

The major problems with the 2 main parties is an almost total lack of internal democracy – the tory party is run as though the leader has a divine right of kings having been selected by the parliamentary party alone. They don’t make decisions together, they do as the leader directs – the only power member have is selecting candidates for elections – which is more involvement that most people have, so should be encouraged, even grudgingly.

The lobbying budget then just becomes a marketing budget, and the court of the daily mail decides – not really a viable alternative.

FPTP is not ideal, but at least you have a representative that (in theory) answers to the local voters, and not just to party HQ.

Really? Given that MP’s are rewarded by party HQ for doing as they are told, and punished for representing their constituents view (by defying the whip on the rare occasions they do) I can’t see that FPTP does this in any way.

Perhaps it’s time to get away from the idea that one party supports the workers and one supports the bosses and the lib dems make up random ideas on the basis they will never get elected….

Particularly because all 2.5 main parties support the bosses.

Most unions* are not affiliated to the Labour party at all.

No education unions are affiliated to the Labour Party,

I think there is a merit in discussing what union support for the Labour party looks like, and the process by which they could use that to their advantage.

There is more to unions supporting the Labour party than money, activist time and membership recruitment as well as organising around elections and so on is easier for the Labour party due to the union link – many full timers for the big unions (Unite, Unison) are also Labour supporters and activists, and use their position to develop the party as well as their day job.

I think that non-affiliated unions should be having more of a discussion about what they do with their political funds – at the moment, they either spend it on political campaigning – like the PCS, make your vote count, donate it to individual politicians, like the FBU, prop up an ailing and pretty lack lustre collection of political groupings (RMT – who support NO2EU and TUSC) or employing a team of full time parliamentary lobbyists – which is what the education unions do.

PCS is currently going through the process of changing what they do with their not insubstantial amount of money, and it’s looking likely it will end up going to individual candidates – probably Left Unity, TUSC, left wing Labour and Left Wing Green candidates, knowing the political make up of the PCS NEC, it’s likely to be more towards TUSC than other candidates…

I think the notion of splitting the Labour vote is true, but shouldn’t put off unions breaking the link – Labour have in the past (twice) committed to dealing with the issue and failed each time – introducing a proper electoral system in this country is essential in the current climate – the governments we get are becoming further and further from the will of the people and the end of the 2.5 party system is upon us – we need a voting system which reflects that – some form of PR is essential to stop people getting consistently elected into govt. without any kind go clear mandate – overall voter numbers are going up, overall votes for the big 2.5 parties are going down.

(*in terms of a numerical head count of the actual unions themselves – 15 out of 54 unions affiliate to the Labour party)