Regarding Pidcock ‘not delivering’ for Ineos… I mean, although of course the Ineos cycling team will surely be looking for a Tour winner so are likely not happy as he’s not really looking like a Tour winner now,  we don’t really know what Ineos the company want or think they get from the sponsorship do we?

It does seem as though Ineos the company have ambition to go beyond being an anonymous massive oil company – the Land Rover and https://www.ineoshygienics.com/ being what I’m aware of, so as primarily British deal Pidcock getting a couple of golds in the Olympics is presumably quite a big deal for them. Otherwise if it’s a Radcliffe vanity project, Pidcock is still probably one of the top 5 in terms of recognition, although that might be my British/XC/CX lens.

So I’m still going to say it’s primarily an Ineos cycling team problem. It’s not like he’s not winning races, just maybe not the ones they want to win.

Regarding TP and others salaries https://en.brujulabike.com/how-much-money-do-top-mountain-bikers-make/ is interesting and seems about right to me. TLDR Pidcock $4M, Van der Poel $2M, Schurter $500K, Gwin $1M in his best year.

I’d agree with those on the ‘Ineos problem’ side. The way things have panned out results-wise for Pidcock can’t be a great surprise to anyone.

I will say though, I don’t think any of the top road riders could live with him on an MTB – when he turns up he pretty much always wins. Van der Poel did win occasionally, but never felt anywhere near as nailed on as Pidcock for the win, which suggests that the MTB XC specialists maybe aren’t so bad after all. Pidcock’s build and talents seem perfect for XC to me.

Been thinking about this as we’ve done/had a lot of decoration done recently after a massive extension. There was a lot of moisture in the walls as we had a lot of rain during the build plus of course plaster drying etc etc. Anyway, this manifested itself as discolouration of the paint as the moisture came through, not cracking/peeling. In fact I’m struggling to think of any time I’ve seen interior paint peel due to damp? Seems odd to me. I suppose it can happen if the paint gets damp and then dries quickly, but it still seems odd.

I mention interior paint, as we did get a little patch of cracking/peeling similar to yours on the old exterior where we’d used ‘WEBERSIL P – Solvent-free, Water-based Silicone Paint’ (for colour match reasons with the new monocouche). Anyway, obviously they make all sorts of claims for the paint, but either way it’s not your standard emulsion. The affected area was just below the boiler vent, so could be heat or a bit of damp I suppose but it did look similar.

Now, I know that doesn’t help much…but I’d be looking at the paint used too personally.

Yep that. They still exist for spares etc so definitely worth contacting them.

Since we’re now talking metal sheds and the budget is up a bit. Can’t fault Asgard sheds – they seem to have nailed the ventilation aspect in particular.  https://www.asgardsss.co.uk/centurion-bike-shed-x4 or https://www.asgardsss.co.uk/5×7-metal-shed – have had four of the latter in our shared back garden for 10 years and they have been perfect.

I don’t think its as clearly good news as you make thing. Conservative + Reform share of vote is more than labour in this election, and it’ll likely swing further from labour (as the party in power often suffers some). If the right manages to unite, things could prove interesting come the next election

I agree somewhat, however the unknown is how many current Tory voters would stay if it lurched (further!) to the right – many have already defected to the Libs, and equally how many Reform could vote Tory, since many are disaffected Labour voters. Hard to see how they can square that circle.

We do seem to be a sport at the ‘serious end’ who think it acceptable to spend £5k on a bike, £400 on kit, a £10k car to get there, £20 on the cafe and £6 for parking but baulk at paying for trails…

and £50 to visit BPW for the day, which is I suppose the top end of the paid trails market, but does indicate that people will pay for trails. Or uplift, which is no good without trails.

It’s obviously harder to charge for a more open trail system in the average FC place, and there will always be freeloaders, but I think the will to pay is there. However, the FC haven’t quite found the method yet. Not helped by their attitude perhaps,  as people have mentioned if anything there seems to be less incentive to pay up at FC locations as they are changing for the worse. I go to Cannock a few times a year, and generally do pay to park as I think it’s the ‘right thing to do’ (sometimes not more for logistical reasons), but it is getting less and less interesting on the main trails there, if they change it’s generally for the worse. And that’s coming from an XC mincer. Used to go on a fam holiday for a week a year with Coed-y-Brenin as the focus, but likewise that has got less and less interesting. (Not FC I know, but similar issues).

What I don’t have a handle on is the economics of it across the country, vs the odd success story like BPW. As you say though, the number of ebikes you see at FC places it seems that the money could be out there.

+1 for the small grease gun linked above. Ebay is full of them. I got one recently, having had one of the Weldtite-like ones for years. It’s fine but does limit the grease that you can use as it has to have that thread.

I’m not convinced any tyre finds grip on wet roots 

Agree – that was my first thought reading through this.

Mud you definitely need something that will cut through the slop to find grip – imo this is more about tread pattern (‘spikes’) rather than rubber compound, indeed a soft compound deforming a bit will probably help mud clearance which is the other piece of the puzzle. Tyre width is important too – a more narrow tyre will cut in more, eg CX tyres are definitely more grippy than 2.2″ XC tyres in slop (and fat bike tyres are famously terrible in mud), but of course there’s your compromise as you don’t want a 33mm tyre. I’ve got some 2″ Bontrager XR Mud which are great for mud…but not really much else, which is presumably why they don’t sell them anymore.

TLDR as everyone says, you may have to compromise.

Pagers traditionally dont use rechargeable cells, but use AA cells.

There is an N cell available, same diameter as AA but half the length…….giving space for an explosive material.

Seems quite likely – it would be much easier to switch AAs than gut each pager however deep you are into the supply chain. Likewise the same AAs could possibly go in walkie talkies too. Not sure how would you detonate them though?

I really can’t see how this can be anything other than the freehub fundamentally. IF the freehub is pulling the chain then the derailleur cage spring and/or clutch could resist it, hence mitigate the issue, which would explain why the derailleur can make a difference to the behaviour. However, it absolutely must be the freehub pulling the chain initiating the behaviour – there is no other force at work to move the chain when freewheeling. Smaller cogs makes sense as for a given torque the force on the chain will be higher closer to the axle.

Came to conclusion my hardtail, with a few mods, would be a better option. Might want to add some bar ends for more hand positions/comfort and take off the Mezcal/Barzo tyres for something more ‘all rounder’.

Yes, this. I came to the same conclusion a couple of years ago. Bar ends in the middle of my bars and Continental Race King Protections are what you need. Even grav racers are using Race Kings on their grav bikes now. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7pim7oOwIc/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

This popped up in my feed yesterday. https://youtu.be/s4mFH6PNwsk?si=q0w3Ix2o7TcRfLrr . Quite interesting re (some of) the discussion above – it’s an interview with a recently contracted and then captured Russian soldier (they claim all OK re the Geneva Convention but I digress). Confirms that they’re being promised what he seems to think is good money, but he hasn’t seen much of that promised. Neither did they keep their promise that he would be a driver, but sent him to the front line with minimal training. Says most of the soldiers are old 40s..50s. ie us. Most interestingly with the discussion re Putin above he says he voted for the first time recently….for Putin. Fears a return to the chaos of the 90s so he wants Putin to stay regardless. That said, he also wants to stay a Ukranian PoW for the time being as he thinks he’ll just get sent back to the front with a Russian machine gun at his back if he’s exchanged.

Yeah, I didn’t make it to the woodpile either. Surprised but not surprised that they have (presumably, as country people) never seen the signs – not sure I’ve seen a Forestry woodpile in years without one.

Yeah, it’s a B2 – all over the place, eg here https://www.eshop.novatecwheels.eu/eshop/freehub-body-b2-type-sram-xdr-alloy-6-pawls/p-5304405.xhtml – Hunt used to do them for £25 but they seem to have doubled in price at some point https://www.huntbikewheels.com/products/replacement-freehub-for-all-hunt-wheelsets

Ratty stock car/MX venues. Generally plenty of parking obvs, main problem with MX venues can be mud but if you can avoid their actual track as much as possible it can be fine.

Edit, a very quick Google and I’d be looking here in the NE for a start. https://www.barfordraceway.com/

After 10 yrs degree/phd/research I landed in software, which then lead me into the telecoms industry. Recently of course have had a brush with maths again thanks to the ML boom.

More than ever it feels like the world’s your oyster with a maths degree – any of the above seem feasible to me.

£120 Nordisk tent just turned up. Looks brand new to me, I assume they ran out of the demo ones so just subbed a new one…

Ah, I did fear that looking at it. Assume the guides are toast? You can get them from SJS (it’s where I got mine from):

https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/gear-spares/shimano-strs505-sl-cable-guide-a-left-hand-y03m75000/

https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/gear-spares/shimano-strs505-sl-cable-guide-b-left-hand-y03m74000/

Epoxy plus replacement guides might do it?

Can’t quite tell, but is it cable guide A in the above linked doc? Also shown on P79 here:

https://si.shimano.com/en/pdfs/dm/BR0008/DM-BR0008-10-ENG.pdf

I have a pair in the shed which I’ll take a look at later anyway to see if I can help at all. I’ve already had to replace cable guide B in one of them. They seem to shift around a bit too easily.

Re the teenage interest thing – yeah, same here – I heard about the reunion from my 16 yr old son. I do always tell him that he should try The Stone Roses but no interest in them.

Just be careful for it not to be your only card – the chip is the wrong end of the card and the strip is too close to the edge for the French pay at pump fuel stations. I had to use my regular bank card for those.

Ahh. Slightly OT but I had the same issue with a Chase debit card this year. Well, at least now I know what the issue was.

Back on topic I’ve got a Wise and a Revolut and both seem fine to me.

So, how does this work again?

Cancel your subscription, wait a day or so. (The wait is probably unecessary IMO, I think the key is to have no active subscription, but we did it).

Buy three of these 12 month Core subscriptions. <b><u>https://www.cdkeys.com/xbox-live/xbox-game-pass-core-12-month-membership-ww</u></b&gt;

Apply them all, (‘stack them’). You should now have 3 years Core for 3 x 33 at the rates when I linked.

Buy 1 month Ultimate eg https://www.cdkeys.com/xbox-live/1-month-xbox-game-pass-ultimate-xbox-one-pc . Apply it. It converts your Core to Ultimate at a 2/3 rate. You should end up with 2 yrs Ultimate plus the 1 month you bought. About £108 total in fact.

You can (in theory) make it cheaper by buying 12 month Indian Core passes and applying them while connected to India via a VPN. This did work apart from the problem that the 12 month key from CJS turned out to be a 6 month. There are apparently some other variations to get the 1 month Ultimate which then converts the Core, but the above method worked for us.

Thread resurrection – just jumped through the hoops for my son. 3 x 12 month Core Gamepass keys from CDKeys, then 1 month Ultimate has resulted in 25 months of Ultimate for about £100. £275 saved so not bad.

(Did also buy a supposed 12 month India core key from CJS keys which turned out to be a 6 month which spoiled the numbers a bit – had they turned out to be legit then it would have been 25 months for about £70.)

Re Innov8. They’re light, yes, but flimsy. Mrs B’s disintegrated after 6 months of winter dog walking, my 9 month old ones are on the way out having just had light non-winter use. Both split where they flex as you walk. I sent Mrs B’s back … they have not been helpful, every couple of months I summon up the resolve to chase them again … and again about them.

I’ll add, perhaps helpfully, that I’ve had real issues with top end SRAM 12spd chains and hot wax (in my case I am a 6yr now user of putoline) – it just never really got into the chain, would suffer frequent multiple stiff/seized links as a result. Works well with XT chains though.

Possibly related I had terrible trouble with 12sp flat top waxed chains in muddy cross races last year, to the point that I abandoned them completely. At the time I just put it down to flat top chains, but I have been wondering since, as few others seem to have had trouble with them. Wondering now whether it may be worth some more experimentation with non-waxed flat top.

I have tan wall Baby Limus. Had to do the wheel lie down as above to get the sidewalls to seal, but I’ve only got them acceptable, maybe good for a few days. Fine for me as I use them for cross and fiddle with the pressure at each race anyway, but they’re crap compared to every other tyre I’ve got.

So TLDR in my experience not really.

Still can’t get anywhere with private messages, just not working at all

Same here, can see message history, but no text box to write a new one.

Also can’t dismiss the msg box which I think I reported weeks ago.

You can get into the message to them. I’ve replied to one, but i have no idea if he’ll see it :D

Or indeed if he’ll be able to workaround to reply.

If it’s stickied – never look – never bother to see when it was last updated.,

This was definitely the case for me. I hardly noticed the thread after it was stickied having previously bought a load of tents etc.

[MOD] Closing the thread to test as per Marks post on the last page. Please continue to post PSAs in their own threads

btw, since we now seem to have a Sonos own goal thread – the latest iOS update somehow seems to be even more of a Dodo. I’ve deleted it as it was using 65% of my battery.

I’m not the only one https://www.reddit.com/r/sonos/comments/1eai1rw/has_the_sonos_app_been_draining_anyone_elses/

Potentially useful update – ordered a Fulli on Thursday afternoon, it just arrived today (Wed lunchtime for future readers). Seems pretty good to me given that it’s come from France.

https://www.fulli.com/en/electronic-toll-tag

No, that’s wrong – while he was riding almost nobody spoke out against Armstrong, except Bassons,

Well, there were the books (Walsh eg) , the newspaper articles (l’Equipe, Walsh again) , the personal recollections (Emma O-Reilly, edit: Andreu) and others condemning him (Lemond) .

So the body of evidence was large, even if we chose to ignore or excuse it.

I don’t see the same now.

One of the things removed from the new firmware (speaker part) updates is the ability to use an older version of the Sonos S2 app.

Ah, didn’t realise that as I’m iPhone. They really have lost it haven’t they?

Sonos recently released a pretty disastrous update. It’s all you’ll read about here: https://x.com/brickedbysonos https://www.reddit.com/r/sonos/

I’m currently limping along on reduced functionality, but do have a mostly working system for my uses. Some people are reporting nothing working (like you?).

I doubt your issues are anything to do with the WiFi, possible of course, but unlikely. I’d be ruling out their recent crappiness first.

Short term I believe the desktop app works better for some (doesn’t seem any different to the app to me), and some people have been using this on an iPhone https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/sonophone-for-sonos/id815251931

If you’re on Android, and comfortable doing so, revert your app to an older version https://techissuestoday.com/heres-how-to-roll-back-to-the-previous-version-of-sonos-app/

Long term you have two choices.

1) Hope Sonos sort themselves out.

2) Go somewhere else. Of course your Sonos gear will likely be worthless if it comes to that.

When sending a message in Classifieds the X dismiss button does not dismiss the message window. Win10/Brave browser. Same in Win10/Chrome.

(Might be also an idea to give a hint that when you’re not logged in there’s no message icon in the ad – thought for a minute message didn’t work at all with Chrome when I fired it up to check if it had the above bug too.)

I’d post a screenshot….but…

Good explanation of the technicals by Dave who used to work at MS (*):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAzEJxOo1ts

TLDR the Crowdstrike driver is a kernel driver that marks itself as required to boot (‘a bootstart driver’).

The driver is tested and certified by MS….the definition files that the driver loads, which are almost certainly code, are not. The definition file made an invalid memory access causing a SEGV. Kernel quite reasonably gives up at this point, reasonable given its architecture and CrowdStrike’s use of it anyway.

Still of course how Crowdstrike allowed something so large scope to happen is anyone’s guess.

(*) and by the looks of things was in early enough to make an absolute boatload!

I did drive a Saab 93 with a slight clatter from the DMF for 4 years or so, eventually scrapped as other things were beginning to fail – but this was when used cars were worth nothing.

In your situation now I’d probably replace the DMF as long as the car is otherwise good.

What he IS taking will be subject to speculation, but given the multiple testing, it will be legal.

Given the history I’m certainly not 100% that they’re clean now, but on balance I still believe.

In the past though it was pretty obvious what and/or how riders were doping. eg. EPO and its effects were well known and certainly in its earlier years there was no test for its use. There were more than whispers about who was doping and how they were doing it – multiple TdF scandals, Lance books (Walsh, O’Reilly) etc.

There does seem to be any of that now (yet? I hope not).

@snotrag is right. That said, on the rare occasion I’ve been asked to deflate it’s not really worth arguing the toss over the physics.

It is somewhat dangerous if it’s a high volume tyre @ (say) 80PSI as there’s a lot of potential energy = explosion, which is not what you want on an aeroplane.

As a result of this thread we paid £500 for a detachable inc. fitting from JIB towbars in the Midlands. Got a detachable because of the reversing sensors.

Their quote in my email was:

Fixed Flange Towbar c/w 13 Pin Universal Electrics is £400.00 (May affect Rear Parking Sensors)

Detachable Swan Neck Towbar c/w 13 Pin Universal Electrics is £500.00