you're just all sold into the whole ethos of it, they've completely got you by the balls.
THe complaint about "having a separate mp3 player is too much to cart around" – that's an image THEY'VE put into your head! It just goes to show the miraculous ability of a clever marketing campaign to tell you that you need something, in lieu of you actually realising you need it yourself.

'I mean tongue, who eats tongue, for god's sake?' :wink:

if you're moving to lincolnshire, my advice –
a) get a road bike
b) prepare to drive a long way when the road bike doesn't satisfy the lust for mtbing
:wink:
for me nearest is dalby 2hrs up the A1 but it's bloody shut at the moment, wales is 4 hours, peaks is a quagmire

harmston's not far from where i live

fwiw you are also pretty much on the doorstep of superstarcomponents …not sure whether that's an advnatage or dis~ :wink:

Spend half an hour using one for things that you think you'll find useful, and I'd be very surprised if you didn't want to stick with it. My problem is my inability to put the bloody thing down.

Such as?

What would I want to do that it would be useful for?

THe things I can think of – sat nav, mp3 player, camera, and even phone – a dedicated device is much better at the job than the iphone is.

Um, if you don't like iPhiones and don't see the point that's great, get a simple phone or no phone, I really don't mind.

I like my iPhone, I use it more than any other phone I've had and I no longer have to remember to pick up my iPod to listen to my music in there car. So if you don't want one fine, just don't knock something that other people obviously do like just cos you don't get it.

I don't get single speed bikes, fixies or tandems but I'm not about to start a thread about it, other people think they're great, I think they're (the people) weird, but that's my problem, not theirs

don't get me wrong i don't have any issue with people that like them, I just, as you put it – "don't get it", would be a fairly accurate way of putting it.
I suppose it's not the devices themselves but the users of them – and there's different classes of users of them – there's those that love it to the point that they can't understand why anyone WOULDN'T have one and think you're a moron if you don't or don't know how to use theirs, and there's those that just have them 'cos they like them but appreciate that it's their choice and don't expect everybody else to buy into it.
If you're in the latter category, then fine, but it's the former that I've got a problem with.
Part of my issue with that set of people is they think that just because it's an iphone and it's famous, that everyone should know how to use it. Sorry,but they don't, and some have no desire to. If you have, say, a Samsung SX500, you wouldn't give it to someone and expect them to know how to use it and tut when they don't, but people think that because it's an iphone that everyone knows how to use it.

can use automated systems with it as you can't with a pulse dial phone.

no great gain is it! :wink:

I think, for me, it wouldn't require many modifications to convince me that it would be worth it:
* camera as good as budget smartphone
* red and green buttons for ending and starting calls, and up/down key
* good sat nav that doesn't rely on the internet
* good durability
but that would require actually making it functional and would divert the effort of the designers that are employed to make it addictive to the proles.

no actually i would quite enjoy the process of dialling. It's quite therapeutic.

TJ – that raises another grumble, what was actually wrong with the dial? Why is it that if you manage to discover a seller of phones with a dial (which we did to get my brother one for christmas) , do you find that it has to have some internal gubbins to convert the signal from the dial into the signal that buttons would make? WHY? :evil:
Why isn't it the responsibility of the buttons to convert into the signal that a dial, which was there first, would make?

I love 'em. I'm on my third now.

I would hate them if i was on my third already because something that costs that much should last a bit longer than that. That's my other gripe with them – they're probably designed to only last a certain amount of time, so then you'll go flocking back to the shop for another one which will have a slightly different colour scheme and you will therefore regard it as better and therefore worth it anyway.

There's 1 button.

But really? The number of icons on an iPhone screen bewilders you and how you struggle to fathom out that you're meant to tap the icons? You are my 89 year old Grandfather and I claim my £5.
oh, TAP now, is it! :roll: Christ, what's actually wrong with buttons? What does it actually GAIN by being touch screen? (For the user, I mean, not for apple.)

You hate a phone… Really?

No I don't hate it like I would if it had for example murdered my child, say, but I … shall we say, despair, at all the hype that is associated with them. Most iPhone users start out denouncing them as naff, but then fall victim to the lure of the process of merely just discovering what apps you can get for it. They sit there mindlessly jabbing at it and then suddenly announce that hey! you can get an app for it that does so-and-so, and you're supposed to be impressed. :roll:
It's not that people actually find using the apps useful, but that they are addicted to the process of finding what ones you can get for it. They see it as 'upgrading' their phone – people love uprading things, so I must say in their credit apple have cottoned onto an extremely profitable business model, by finding a way of just exploiting people's sense of novelty.

are you sure the cassette doesn't need a spacer on behind it…like one of the ones that goes between the cogs that are separate, but on before even the biggest one. i've had this before.

fashion.

The inference is that the only useful thing you can do is breed

It's wrong in two ways:
one, it assumes breeding is useful – why is this assumed to be the case.
Two, it assumes there isn't anything ELSE that's useful – again, an invalid assumption imho.

That's being slightly obtuse in that the wrongness stems from the same premise, in that breeding isn't any LESS useful than anything else we do, but it isn't necessarily MORE useful either.

Plus only reason anything living thing exists is to reproduce to ensure its contuinued existence anyway.

don't get this at all. Says who?

Erm, biology?

Biology governs HOW we exist. It has no place in determining WHY.

Plus only reason anything living thing exists is to reproduce to ensure its contuinued existence anyway.

don't get this at all. Says who?

And the one that made me cry – whilst talking to our 3 year old I asked her what her favourite colour was, her answer "The colour of your eyes Daddy". Bless.

did it make you cry because you were happy or because she explicitly pointed out what was her favourite colour and in doing so poked you in the eye :lol:

I've never really got the whole "not having kids is selfish" thing. Selfish to who exactly? Surely you can only be selfish if you put yourself before others, not if you put yourself before theoretical people that don't exist yet?

er… not necessarily. Selfishness just means putting yourself first.
Whether you do that by getting in front of whoever's second, or simply by making sure there ISN'T anybody to be second, is irrelevant.

In all seriousness the only moral qualms I have about not having kids is that I suspect that my parents would quite like to have grandchildren, although I don't think they mind not doing.
However I have two brothers, one of which is already married and seems bought into the whole settling-down thing so I think he's more likely to than me anyway :wink:

Ohh, here we go. If that is your view then you should ask for assisted suicide and stop being a drain on the earth's dwindling resources

er, no it's not THAT bad, let's get it in proportion.

– after all what purpose do you have on the planet if you are not going to scatter your seed?

What a silly question. I'm not even going to point out the ludicrousness of that question, I'm just going to leave you to stew in your own pointlessness while it sinks in just how oxymoronic what you've just said is.

I'm quite happy not having kids. It would be nice, but the amount that I would need to sacrifice for it is just too much for me. My freedom is too important. That may be selfish, but in a lot of ways not having kids is also UNselfish – if oil is running out and global warming is happening then the life on this world's going to be worse for the next generation than for us. Let's slim down the population rather than just mindlessly knocking more and more people out and letting the global population balloon and there not be enough land for anyone.
Also, probably irrationally, but people with kids do annoy me. As someone else mentioned the fact they always seem to get time off to go and pick them up. I was trying to get people to play for the sports team I'm running yesterday – most couldn't play for "kids" reasons. One of them had to go and pick their kids up. I remember walking home from things when I was a kid. What happened to the team that YOU joined? why bother joining it if you aren't going to bother playing…?

Up there today, I was about the only one there!

The snow is melting fast but the trails and forest roads are like porridge, loads of branches and small trees down with the weight of the snow, it's a nightmare!

I wouldn't bother going for the next 10 days at least unless we have a heat wave or a few good windy days

what's the singletrack like? any good?

the east of the country's supposedly the last to thaw, hopefully it might have thawed by next weekend though, quite fancy a blast up there.

isn't it a gruff dwarf that sits under a bridge in a river?

does this make sense:

God doesnt exist, to suggest there include a clause suggesting that there is a god and you must accept that there is a god is racist.

So does this mean… God doest exist to suggest that there isn't a clause suggesting that he exists, but he also exists for a whole host of other purposes.
And what does the clause for which God doesn't only exist state again? I'm not sure I follow the next bit.
Confused…
:wink:

You're right – Penmachno isn't having these problems. However, Penmachno isn't a private forest, with a visitor centre employing staff. Also Penmachno is very likely to close (or at least stop maintaining the trail) as there aren't enough people putting money in the honesty parking to keep the place going.

It costs a certain amount of money to maintain trails – an amount which may be more than gets put in penmachno's honesty box, but somehow I think it's a little bit less than £100k a week.

Sorry to be harsh – don't get me wrong, I like llandegla, but this is the unfortunate reality of making a business out of a trail centre. Penmachno won't be having these problems.

i would steer clear of stronglight purely on principle as my planet x had stronglight cranks on and they got recalled. (Replaced with better ones, mind, at no charge, but just wouldn't trust stronglight.)

it's obvious isn't it? the wind turbines are to be connected directly to the driveshaft of the cable that pulls the chairs up the mountain.

oh and good luck with remaining patient waiting for it to get delivered as well.

I used to have one. It was a very good bike, BUT I would advise you to steer clear for a couple of reasons:
1) The company's customer service is frustratingly bad, you cannot get in contact with them and when you do they don't speak brilliant english. Very difficult to get through on the phone.
2) The reason I changed my frame was that the swing arm bearings wore out AND THERE IS NO WAY TO REPLACE THEM!! (Other than sending the frame back to Germany).

See:
http://www.bikeradar.com/road/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12622377&highlight=
(especially the penultimate post, from me)

I also had to get the downtube swing arm threads in the frame helicoiled:
http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/has-my-frame-had-it

basically the big bolt that holds the swing arm to the seat stay is the big nightmare – it's proprietary. No way to get it off.

The other thing is that I would say their sizing guidelines is fairly XC oriented – i.e. it will tend to, if anything, recommend a frame slightly too large than too small. I had a 20" one, I have now got an 18" cove hustler and the difference in handling ability is marked. I didn't know I had too large a frame before I'd known better, it's not that pronounced, but now I ride a slightly smaller one, it's obvious to me that it was too large.
I had a Nerve ES 5 (discontinued) which is similar to what's now either the Nerve XC or Nerve AM, but both those frames look slightly different to mine. (better in the way that the down tube and top tube are welded to each other as opposed to being independently welded to the headtube)

Good bloody riddance to it.
Quite nice biking in it a few times but once the novelty's worn off it's just a grind and just an excuse for yet more doom and gloom in the papers.
I bought some stout, waterproof, walking boots yesterday, with the thinking that if the cold and snow carries on, then I'll get some good use out of them, but if sod's law prevails and it clears up now I've got myself equipped for it, then everyone'll thank me for it. I'll have a pint, ta.

looks like a case for speak you're branes[/url]

fwiw unfortunately you don't have the god given human right NOT to slip on ice.

Apologies if this sounds a bit facetious but what would be the effect if you always carried a photo of an open space with you when you went into the woods and looked at it whenever you felt a bit claustrophobic.
I'm not saying it will help but maybe why it wouldn't help would help explain to people who have no concept of what it's like to understand the condition.

I sometimes start to panic when a jumper won't come off quickly enough!!!

always start by holding it at the bottom not at the neck. it may end up inside out but it's a lot easier and quicker.

antifreeze.

edit: actually probably best not thinking about it.

sorry but there are only three valid phobias: closed spaces, open spaces, and spiders. There is too much of a proliferation of people using the terms "phobia" and "allergy" when what they actually mean is that they just don't like something, but to the point that they can't stand it, so they feel the need to use a stronger term.

ahem, sorry. :wink: only joking – rant over. go on, tell us what the phobia is of.

you can "pay off" a claim and it then goes down as a "no loss" and as such is regarded as a non-claim and thus doesn't affect your no claims.
Whether you can pull out and thus get your car fixed at non-insurance rates is something your insurer only can tell you, can't do any harm to ask.

can i just say, i think the presence of this thread did actually encourage me to order some gloves when i probably wouldn't have trusted je james otherwise (they came pretty promptly.)
So keep it up it's probably upping sales.

Yeah because some people on a car forum obviously know more than the majority of the world's climate scientists.

I wish people would just be honest enough to say that they don't really give a shit about climate change and whether man is having an impact on it, rather than claiming they know something about it.

I think with most people it's not that they don't give a shit about it, but just that they don't see how any decisions they make are going to affect it, or how it's going to affect them, their children, or their children's children.
As such they're quite willing to do things like get energy efficient lightbulbs instead of normals when it's convenient to do so, but don't rightly see how putting themselves out by a considerable degree in the name of climate change is anything but a completely thankless exercise.