+! for Western Digital – I’ve got something like this one from Amazon hdd – powered off the USB port so no extra cables making it nice and portable. For £50 can’t really go wrong (2tb is only £80…). Not stunning speeds but for backups that’s not really an issue.

Also looking at cloud storage, but that’s a separate issue.

Yes, that gets quite expensive very quickly for larger capacity. Sign yourself up for DropBox or MS Skydrive and stick your most favouritist 5 GB of photos up there for free (Skydrive might be 7GB).

I’ve been running 25s for a while now and really like ’em. My mate is gonna swap from 23 to 25 when he needs new tyres, but we do ride some fairly rough roads knackered by either frost or the salty seaside air.

Alas, my favourite Michelin Krylions seem to only come in 23s this year in their lastest ‘Endurance 4’ incarnation so gonna have to consider different make or trying the 23s…

I’d recommend local too – our will was supposedly straightforwards but the solicitor pointed out a few flaws that we really hadn’t considered, e.g. leave house to partner if you die, not daughter then do another will then if required.

It was less than £100 iirc.

Surly the will be some discs in the tour this year? I hope to see at least 1 team running them.

Nothing will get up and running in the Pro tour until the support cars (including the Mavic neutral) can carry disk wheels and every rider can have confidence they can put any wheel in the back and the brakes won’t rub. Can’t see everyone wanting to get together to muck around shimming disks so they’ll fit into all bikes. There’s a lot more leeway on a rim brake.

CX Pros might use them more as it’s your own wheels you’ll be using.

A hydro rim brake like SRAM are supposedly doing might become the compromise for a while.

I has a seller e-mail me to say he refused to give me positive feedback until I’d left him positive feedback for the item. I DON’T DO feedback trading, it ruins the whole system, so I left him neutral feedback and explained why nicely.

And now eBay don’t even allow sellers to leave neutral/bad feedback! To be honest, I don’t give feedback until I get some for my sales but I don’t hassle buyers if they don’t give feedback.

The bigger issue therefore i think is that when we look for an agent, the temptation is to go for the one who values it the highest rather than honestly, and thus the haggling process exists.

^^^ this. People get a couple of Estate Agents in and pick the one who’ll sell it for the most money. But it doesn’t, it sits on the market for a year because it’s overpriced and then they flog it for a knock down price as they get desperate.

Cheeky bid, but also include reasons why it’s a cheeky bid (without obviously saying it’s cheeky 😀 ) – no chain involved, mortgage approved, needs work doing etc. etc.

Anyone use gaiters? I’m a bit long of leg and waterproof trousers tend to come up a touch short on me so I end up with a band of wetness twixt boot and trousers that gradually runs down inside the aforementioned shoe.

Northwaves Celcius are pretty good, fairly smooth to prevent clag buildup. Had mine for many years now and been really happy with them.

Assuming that 3K is for 4 people?

Keep an eye on Miami flights too. It’s a relatively short hop to Orlando from there and you might get slightly better flight price.

More of a clart but try to find a cheapy to New York/Washington and an internal flight down – they are pretty decent prices normally.

As jekkle says make sure you agree up front who gets what etc.

If you’re mate is going to be putting in more deposit then does he/she get a percentage more of the house price when you sell, or just his extra deposit back – things like that.

shouldn’t they be quieter – as they are aero and disturbing less air?

It’s like a big hollow ‘box’ (albeit circular in shape) that amplifies the sound – like Orange swingarms!

does anybody use waterproof 3/4 shorts such as the Endura MT500 Spray?

I ‘think’ the sprays are only waterproof on the back of the legs, not the top of the thighs. This just stops spray from the wheel which you’ll be doing with the guards anyway.

In practice whilst wearing a waterproof jacket I found all the water used to run off and just soak my shorts. Go for fully waterproofs.

I’ll post some pics up sometime but I also did a longer DIY mudflap on my ‘guards which helps a lot – it stops the spray from the road soaking your shoes – as people say, it’s the stuff off the floor that makes you wet most times, not the actual rain coming down.

As phinw says, no bleeding probably required but make sure you have the spare olive and insert to hand. Having to order them from CRC after you’ve chopped the hose probably needs a bleed 😳

Politics.. Its all very confusing.

Indeed, I’ve worked on elections and voting stations. A lot of the Labour supporters I’ve dealt with would have been kicked out of NF meetings for being too extreme. They just vote Labour because their fathers did, etc. etc.

Just be ware – in the UK most exits off a motorway go onto a roundabout so if you do take the wrong exit it’s just a case of rejoining. A lot of freeways tend to exit onto roads that often don’t have a roundabout (they just merge onto new freeways). Been caught out a couple of times trundling 10 miles up another freeway to find a way of turning around.

Get an automatic (you probably won’t have a choice). Have to put your foot on the brake to start the car often (and putting it in gear!).

How do you get elected in a two horse race if you write off 47% of the electorate? Someone do the maths and tell me how much of the remaining 53% he has to get?

I thought I’d read a different ‘version’ of that speech that implied Mitt was talking about 47% of Obama voters so that equates to 25% of the electorate (assuming 50/50ish split between Obama and Romney.

Have you booked the BA tickets yet? If you are paying for Club/Business, consider flying out of London City to JFK with them – you get a (albeit smaller) plane with just club seats – quick stopover in Shannon to do the immigration stuff and when you arrive in New York you don’t wait in any massive queue – worth the money in itself sometimes.

Technically you’re probably on a months notice to leave, if you went “nuts to this, I’m not coming back” I’m not sure they could do much apart from not pay you and not give you any references – for 2 weeks work that’s a price you might want to consider….

use a high viz vest from work (Used to work shift too) which I throw over whatever the weather dictates I’m wearing, much handier than getting high viz everything else.

+1 especially if you’ve already got a decent jacket.

On single carriageway you tend to be limited by the caravan driver in front of you. Dual carriageways allow the Audi drivers amongst us a mandate to drive 3 inches from your bumper thus can actually be more dangerous.

They won’t mind as long as you keep paying them for the days the little one isn’t there.

My wife is scandinavian – she has a face like a norse

To be honest if you’re just thinking about investing the £500 and that’s it during 18 years I wouldn’t worry too much about the control thing. Heaven forbid they blew it all on one beer or something in 2030… 😀

We’ll doing something like pieface – Junior savings that baby breathe can spend as she likes (hopefully at university….) and a savings account we can choose to give her whenever, maybe as a house deposit.

If you’re not using your own stocks and shares ISA maybe put it in that. That way you could keep it seperate from any cash ISA you have.

I’m still looking after mine today – after 8, yes, 8 weeks off the teachers feel they need to have another day doing ‘training’… but that’s a different rant.

Still, could be worse, next doors just had a phone call – the school hasn’t finished the building work so could they keep their child off another day please?! Don’t think they were too happy.

SLX or even Deore for £55 maybe.

That £90 SLX one has 36t chainring mind so if you want anything lower factor in replacement costs.

Light as possible and £80 sadly don’t mix very well in MTB cranks!

When my best mate started as a postie he said he, in youthful ignorance/laziness, didn’t take out parcels and just the red cards. Got copped pretty quickly by someone he ‘thought’ wouldn’t be in so he’s never done it since.

Problem with the Wiggle returns at local shops is you know someone is going to collect the return parcels once a day. And, to be fair, there isn’t many of them normally. Once you start getting to levels of the Royal Mail and people not being able to collect them due to working hours until the weekend, you’d have a massive pile taking over the whole shop, so it’d sharp get unworkable.

the sooner the supermarkets get the contract for parcels from royal fail mail the better.

What, would that be the ASDA just round the corner, or the Tescos 10 miles away?

Supermarkets will never do this. It’ll take up too much valuable space that they won’t be able to profit from. Even taking into account the “I’m picking up a parcel from Lidl, I’ll just get a pint of milk while I’m here” scenario.

What royal mail really need to do is to allow items to be held at the sorting office rather than attempting delivery at all. i.e. by allowing you to get items sent to JOE BLOGS C/O DORCHESTER SORTING OFFICE, the postie would then just slip a red card through the door stating x items are waiting for you to collect

Erm, and how would the postie do that if he hasn’t got your address. Sure mine hasn’t memorised the few thousand names on his walk…

Actually, the whole idea of leaving with neighbours is exactly the opposite of what you want – they don’t want thousands of parcels at the office that someone has to handle for collection. Cheaper that way for them.

Should have asked the STW massive – we’d have pointed you to that adaptor in about 10 seconds. 😛

I imagine a Phalanx on US warships would have stopped a lot of kamikaze planes.

But yes, a decent nuke powered submarine fleet would have stopped Japan and Germany in their tracks.

James Dyson is another worthy of mention for being a decent hard working honest British taxpayer.

Who moved his business to the Far East thus deprived 800 other honest British workers of a job and thus chance of paying tax?

Cough Offshore move of Mr Dyson

There is an aviation crunch coming, whether we choose to accept the fact or not.

Agreed. Fuel costs is nigh on bankrupting most airlines at the moment.

Has anyone ever made one with copper tube and a pipe bender?

Hence the very rich ‘needing’ unnecessarily large homes, very expensive clothes and cars, being able to dine in the most expensive restaurants etc.

Unfortunately it’s not just the rich is it.

Missus was watching some penny pinching tv show on this week – a couple couldn’t afford their wedding so were doing it on the cheap. They sat there complaining they had no money just beside the 50″ plasma television, calling in favours from mates on their latest iPhone, etc.

Perhaps we need to move away from the “hub and spoke” model, in fact isn’t that what Boeing are betting on with the 787?

The 787 model is based heavily on the big carriers flying regular slots – most ‘business’ travellers (i.e. the ones that pay big bucks for club/first seats want to fly when it’s convenient for them – that means smaller planes that fly more than once a day.

The big Airbus A360 concept is more for holiday makers – one slot at the airport and you can shift 500+ passengers in one go. Though maybe only flying once a day to the destination with a slightly inconvenient take off/arrival time.

Boris Island will never work. I know someone ‘in the know’ and basically the only thing that is going to come out of it is a few companies are going to make millions doing designs/investigations etc. etc. before they admit what is already fairly well know internally – it won’t be feasible.

Depends what you’re trying to do.

If it’s just pictures from PC to Ipad then yes.

Other things are a little tricky, hence Dropbox.

Dropbox is something you install on your PC and the iPad has an app version. There is a folder where you ‘drop’ files and the magic of the internet synchs them onto the other device next time you switch it on. Works both ways, on multiple PCs etc.

If you’re serious about buying her half off her, then try and see if you can knock off the £2000 estate agents fees you’ve just saved….

I wonder what might happen if you tell her how little her ‘new’ mortgage will get her property-wise?

Might put the kettle on and select a nice biscuit for the Apple vs Google fight…

Wonder how many links to iPads et al get ‘removed’ from Google Search engines if things go badly 😉

Worth considering some decent pads, rather than the stock ones. That’ll help too.

Oh, and yes, mini vees are better and no brake judder….

Instead of 53/25, try 38/18 – it’s exactly the same ratio and the chainline will be better too….

Hey, don’t knock them. The power of the mind to decide if you’re stronger/faster/awesome is a strange thing.

IIRC they did some studies on athletes telling them they’d given them the next ‘thing’ in vitamins (or something like that). Funnily enough they all performed better with just the placebo.

Utter rubbish in their scientific mumbo as to how they work, but something to concentrate on they might have some substrance. Though it would be cheaper to tie a bit of string around your wrist instead…