Number of watchers isn’t really a guide to how much it’ll go for, but it is reassuring that people interested (and at least you haven’t mistakenly put you bike bits in the pottery and ceramics section of eBay).

Crazy as it sounds I’ve often see the low watcher count stuff go for more as you get two people who definitely want it and try to out bid each other.

I tend to watch stuff I wouldn’t mind if they go for bargain prices, but unwatch when price gets too crazy (as per usual on ebay…).

Good luck, keep your nerve until the last few seconds, it’ll look like its going for pennies before the sniping starts at T minus 7 seconds!

Bit like wot mrSmith says. It’s not ‘better’ to have them on an external hard drive per se unless you’re really really full up, but it does make sense to keep a backup of all those valuable photos.

Unless you have loads of PCs on a network in your house then you only need a USB driven hard disk (ie. not a NAS drive attached for everyone to share).

I’ve got a dinky Western Digital one like this one which I’ve never had a problem with.

Might be worth burning stuff off to a DVD as well, maybe giving a copy to your folks or something so it’s in a diffreent location if you’re really paranoid about losing stuff.

Yep, it’s the carbon ones the need the FSA Mega bb.

I sold something on Sunday, the guy just paid me today without any contact before that. I find it’s not unusual to have a bit of delay, maybe they are selling things and are awaiting payment etc.

I’d maybe drop the buyer a nice note tonight, just checking if everything is okay, that’s it’s cool they haven’t paid yet but could you let them know if there are any issues blah blah blah – you’d just like a reply back that the intention is there to pay basically.

A week is long enough. Relist it on Sunday.

Don’t forget to also put a ‘payment not received’ request in to get your fees back on the original auction otherwise the fees will get taken off regardless. If the original buyer doesn’t accept the non payment it takes 2 weeks IIRC to get refunded.

Well, if you have a 5-bolt compact drive spider you could have a 29t inner and a, say, 44t outer like a Stronglight Oxale 2[/url] did many years ago and just get the correct length bb to suit chainline.

Or get a Middleburn equivalent still.

As NBT says, it’s the seller that has to claim, not you.

I’m thinking a Pressure Suit would be greater value than £46 so that could be an interesting conversation they’ll have.

Suppose Pink Bike may say give it ‘x’ weeks to see if it does arrive (crazier things have happened) but they should refund or replace, especially as they’ll know it’s definitely not been delivered to you.

On the bright side it might be a positive outcome for the bike industry – maybe a few more commuters buying bikes to save on their petrol costs, maybe folders to get to the train station rather than driving etc.

The ‘dentists’ bikes will still keep rolling in, money no object as long as it’s the latest must have electronic shifting thingies.

I suspect the middle ground might take a hit – people choosing SLX over XT maybe

Add the £18 or whatever Parcelforce will slap on for an ‘admin fee’ for handling the parcel too…

+1 to Poly. You’ll be stuffed if it goes walkabout.

Check this out

Basically tell them what job you are appllying for in one paragragh. next paragraph possibly a couple of highlights from the CV or stuff you can’t really put down formally on a CV, closing paragraph thanking them for their time and look forward to answering any questions you may have.

I’m always slightly conflicted at turning away the Jehovah Witnesses.
Sometimes the ladies are quite hot.

I went out with an ex-JW once. Stunningly pretty. She was filthy too. We never used to get bothered in the park when they used to wonder round chatting to people, which was useful too.

I’m with wrecker on this one. Labour are just waiting for Cons to do the dirty, maybe they will tidy up the economy blah blah blah but will hack so many people off they will come unelectable.

I suspect Ed M will bimble along for a couple of years until possibly it looks like we’re on an upturn and the bigger Lab hitters will come out and try to grab the leadership.

Worst case is they spark a farce in the Labour party and voters see the squabbling, and Cons ‘tough love’ actually works and we sail into the next election on a positive note – that’s when it might get tricky.

What’s your payal acccount set up like? if I run out of slush funds in the P/Pal account, the extra just gets taken from my current account automatically and just looks like a standard paypal payment to the seller.

My sister was a homebirth. This meant I was left alone to my own devices at 2 years old.

Someone had to knock on the door of the house to tell people I was sitting on the ledge of an open first floor window dangling my legs out, shouting “I’ve got a new baby sister”…

Sometimes plans change, live with it. The missus had all sorts of fancy birth plans, by the time we got to the hospital it was already too late for all that malarky and baby breatheeasy was already on her way out, bless her. Scared all the couples on a nice little ‘tour’ of the maternity ward I can tell you!!!

Don’t force your other half to do something she’s not 100% comfortable with just because you want to do it ‘cos it sounds trendy and the ‘right’ thing to do. If the midwife can’t calm her fears then just go with the flow.

Evo one is more fancy material IIRC – like a less crunchy feeling waterproof material.

Have you got a waterproof already? if so then how about just getting a hiviz vest to go over the top for a couple of quid?

Hi viz link – they do a nice hiviz rucksack cover too

Nah, stick them all in the same category 26 and 29 together. Where does it stop, do you say people with carbon bikes are going faster than alloy framed ones thus need their own category?

Taken to extremes you could end up being in a category of your own (29er, alloy, xt cranks, flat barred etc. etc.), though to be fair with my skills/fitness I’d still end up coming second in a group of one…

My road calipers have different fittings to my old v-brakes. I think road calipers normally have a wider gap in the arms compared to v’s.

I tried pulling all the pads out of the brake holders and trying to swap the mounting thread from one pad to the other and they weren’t compatible so you might not get a nice swap, but to be fair my mate uses v pads on his road bike and has a gap where the v pad thread goes through the caliper but he hasn’t died yet. It’s on his winter bike so we tend ot be out in crappy weather so a little more pad seems to help him (and they were cheap!).

thebikechain – what saddles were you using before the Iodine if you don’t mind me asking? Just in the market for a nice comfy perch for some road winter mileage.

Jeez, just build the bike up, put the chain on small/small going though the mech as normal. If the mech can’t take all the slack then take a link off until it does.

Bascially when I hear an ‘insurance’ company say that I should have ‘insurance’ then I smell a rat.

Similar to when bike companies say I need a tapered headtube, pressfit bb, maxled, 10 speed bike to do the trails that I’ve been doing for years without feeling the need….

As above, you couldn’t leave negative feedback for him/her anyway.

Put him on your banned list, and hopefully the non-payment will count against him for other purchases.

With a zero rated account though sounds like they’ve got neg feedback in the past and just started again. Expect to see him/her arise from the flames with another longin shortly anyway…

And of course, if the worst did come to the worst, you’d be coughing up for all damage too!

Also, where can i cheaply source a replacemnt?

eBay flogs plenty of bolts if you are sure of the size, ie thread diameter, probably 5mm or 6mm (equates to M5 or M6) and the length of the thread (not including the head). So you’d probably want a, for example, M6 x 15 bolt.

Failing that the local bolt company should have them.

4 week before Christmas and they’re having a sale? Must be the tat they can’t shift from last year.

So you want all surveys to say….

“Room A, has fireplace so potential for house to fall down if no lintel. May burn down as might have electrical issues in wires I can’t see. Might have asbestos in there.”
“Room B, has door, window and fireplace so potential if no lintels for the house to fall down. May burn down….”
and repeat for every room.

No houses would ever get sold!

I bet the report contains several “It appears that….” which is probably their get out of jail card, though I do have sympathy for your predicament.

See what they say. always worth pointing out the issues to them.

And don’t forget the ‘handling fee’ that Parcelforce add on for just delivering it too!

I find it amazing that more people don’t have alarms, big sodding locks, window bars etc etc.

Amte of mine got burgled, they set off the alarm. Police actually came round to check, people actually noticed the alarm.

Problem was the alarm went off again (they all stop after 20 mins, or should anyway) and everyone thought it was just a false alarm caused by the first attempt. No, the scrotes had come back knowing everyone would ignore the second alarm, and cleared it out.

Sonos Play3 speaker?

If so, which ones? They appear to come in 4 speeds, is it a case of more is better? Are they easy to configure?

The 85mbps ones don’t talk to the others, so make sure you’ve got the same type at both ends. Even the slowest ones are quite capable of shifting your internet data are the right speed, if you want to start streaming video etc. all over the house I’d say go for the fastest ones you can afford/justify.

And pretty much plus and play, certainly using ethernet. Not sure what you need to do for the wifi extender, presumably set up the security keys on it for your network etc., wouldn’t think it’d be a chore though.

Schwalbe Marathon Racer is in 35c if I remember. Not completely ‘slick’ mind.

Parcel force have been pretty good ime, if I wanted completely world class buffoonery then I give you, Yodel.

Just discovered the joy of Yodel last night. With no card pushed through the door I think they tried to deliver something on Friday but no-one was home. As it was obviously bin day and the wheelie bins were on the road they didn’t do their usual trick of hiding it in the bin (sigh!) but instead hid it under a bush completely hidden from sight from the drive/front door.

Of course during late November it’s dark when I go out, dark when I come back so pure luck I was chatting to the neighbour and spotted a bit of rubbish in the garden that I went to tidy up – turns out to be about £100 of Amazon stuff for Christmas sitting out in the mud/rain for 4 days….

Check out the Serif stuff too – DrawPlus and Photoplus. Serif were flogging the previous versiopn of Photoplus for a tenner lest week.

I don’t understand how someone could deposit or withdraw from this account if the bank account details were sent to you at your home address. How would the person who set up the account get those details for a new account?

Fairly easily – set it up online with a dodgy hotmail account – emails you all the details you need. I could walk into a bank with your sortcode and account number and pay cash into it, normally no questions asked, or a transfer possibly from a credit card that’s probably been set up in your name too…

Fairly easy to take payment out too, instant transfer as the scammer obviously has all the passwords to the account.

Sounds like a test designed to give the results they want

+1

“Manufacturer in shonky test to make their product look good” shocker.

Maybe checkout the JavaScript framework jQuery – that’ll help you doing stuff.

The real key to web dev stuff is styling it these days so try and get a good grip of CSS.

Don’t get too caught up in bleeding edge stuff. Most companies are still potentially supporting earlier versions of IE (we make sure out stuff works in IE6). Before anyone shouts, if you want to turn away £10,000,000 of income (actual figures) from IE6 users then go ahead, we’re happy to take it off you.

Think the new Edge 200 has a ‘get me out of here’ option and will retrace your steps if you get seriously lost but fairly minimal mapping apart from that. Think it does ‘breadcrumb trail’ tracking whatever that is…

Don’t worry, there’ll be another few ‘standards’ out before 1 & 1/8 become obsolete…

Suffered really badly for year, kept going to docs, got the creams, never really helped.

One day there was a locum doctor in who obviously knew their stuff, rather than the generic “take steroid cream” I used to get from the usual doctor.

She suggested putting the steroid cream on, then putting a pair of plasatic gloves on overnight (like the ones you get in the petrol station when using diesel). Cleared it in a couple of days. Just keeps the moisture in your skin keeping them hydrated. Also useful if you’ve been scratching and got an infection in the skin as that cream is pretty messy and stains.

I still get it now and then, but a blast with a bit of steroid and the plastic bag method zaps it almost overnight.

Got some non-steroidal cream called Aveeno which you can just buy in Boots etc. – they do a range of stuff so might be worth checking out.

Honest, try the plastic glove method on your hands for a couple of nights, even with just a base cream. I’m not a doctor but I wouldn’t recommend the plastic bag treatment if you get eczema on your head. Obviously tricky to put on back too, but that sounds slightly different to me.

PS Do check the size of the box though. ‘Bike’ boxes are probably bigger dimensions than Parcelforce will take – you’ll need to cut it down. They won’t care if it weights 200g if it’s more than 2m long and 3m around the girth (or something like that) – it’s not actually that big a box for a frame/wheels.

Decent box – maybe even a LCD/plasma tv box from the cardboard dump at the tip would do.

Frame protection – bought 100m of bubblewrap off eBay for something daft like a fiver – that’s kept me for a while, and as a bonus if I ever get stressed I can cut off a metre of the stuff and just pop it all….

Parcelforce tends to be my preferred courier just ‘cos I iz lazy and it’s round the corner. £14.25ish for a frame (it’ll never go over the weight limit).

Depends on price of frame and the risk you take but the insurance ramps up fairly quickly. You’ll get the basic £50 or whatever back if it goes missing or broken if you don’t so up to you and you’re risk management on that one.

you won’t get your listing fees back.

I think if you cancel the listing and the buyer agrees then you get your fees back. Or just raise the “payment not received” option. I think it takes 2 weeks unless, again, the buyer agrees that he/she isn’t going to pay.

Don’t get relisting and second chance mixed up. Relisting is basically selling the item again but basically using the same description (say if you’d had 2 of the same item) to save you typing. 2nd chance gives the buyer who missed out a chance (you can select a number of them) and you’ll get charged listing fees anyway as you would have done if original buyer had paid.

Personally I very rarely take up a second chance offer because it uses your maximum offer (rather than a lower price you might have got it for) and always smells of a bit of shill bidding (i.e. he’s got a mate to put bids in to jack the price up).