Amazon sell Khomo cases which hold pencils. Mrs BD and I both have one. Works fine with the Smart Keyboard and has decent sized rubber buffers on three sides.

Only problem is that both our iPads look identical from the Smart Keyboard side but we haven’t got them mixed up yet.

Cases come in a range of fake leather finishes and a couple of fabric ones too.

ive only just got mine after I lost my Apple Pencil in its nice little (but easily mislayable) pencil case!

Baby Trump is possibly the best story I’ve read on the Beeb in ages! Proper chuckle from Mrs BD and I!

Sending it on a “world tour” so it can “haunt Mr Trump wherever he goes” too, haha!

But where is he going?

Surely he cant be following Robert Peston into the world of commercial news broadcasting given all of the stick he’s given him since his jump from Auntie?

So assuming I am too inept to do it myself, and sqirrelking thinks the sparky will make a fudge of things, does anyone have any recommendations of people/companies to ring in the Lancaster/Kendal area?

Thanks for the advise so far too, you’ve justified my insisting to Mrs BD that paying more to run cable about is a wise move!

Thanks

Cheers all,

Should this be a job that the electrician doing the rewiring work could do (not sure if he’s an internet cable sort of guy) or should be just pay a bit more and get another specialists in?

Purple parking are our usual bet, Mrs BD gets NHS discount from them so that’s mostly why we choose them. About a 15 bus ride from the terminal and cars are parked in a huge great multistory thing so no worries about field joyrides.

No idea what they charge at short notice but we’ve always found them much cheaper than the “official” airport parking.

I will also second Exposures excellent service, great products but always nice to know they’ve got your back when things go wrong!

<span style=”color: #444444; font-size: 12px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: #eeeeee;”>It’s the road version. It seems ridiculous but it’s putting me off </span>

I’m right here with you, I’ve even emailed the canyon service centre and not had much of a hopeful reply. Seems like they’ve modified it a bit from the last iteration, but it still uses a compression ring rather than preloading the bearings with a top cap and expansion plug…

Grand, as I hoped! Cheers!

Absolutely brilliant story! Just inhaled my coffee while sniggering!

Got both…
Used to have a joystick on the helmet and an older Gloworm on the bars, worked pretty well but the joystick beam pattern is very “spot” if that makes sense.

Then splurged on a six-pack from Evans in their 30% off sale and found the joystick got completely lost in the light from the six-pack.
(I hasten to add I also tried a Maxx-D and thought it was great, but couldn’t justify NOT spending another a few pounds on a six-pack!)

Then bought a Diablo (just caught the end of the same sale) and found that although its beam was still almost lost in the six-pack when looking forward its spread of light was much better when looking around on the trail, technical corners etc, when the joystick would just illuminate a small area. it defiantly doesn’t throw was far up the trail, but your depth perception and general see-ability are much better.

The Diablos battery life is a bit pants though, I had to buy a support cell to run it on med/high power for anything more than a 1hr ride. The TAP function is bloody useful though, even if you do look like a bit of a pillock banging yourself on the head at the start of every decent!

I do now think I have a pretty perfect set up, and the joystick has been moved onto the bars of the road bike to use its endless battery life on flashing mode.

HTH, Dicky

Happy new year to you all, here’s to hoping you all have a grand 2018, and that I get in a bit more riding!!

Rapidough, Ticket to Ride, and latterly Trivial Pirsuit. I was successful in two of the above… guess which!!

🙄
I’d tune in for more if this!

I have to confess I thought it was pretty average.
Went with next-door neighbour (we’re both in our 30’s) and spent a rather uncomfortable couple of hours both wondering if the other thought it was as bad as we each did!
Good CGI (as expected) but just a bit too twee for me.

As mentioned above the space horses and casino sequence wasn’t necessary,
Hammy acting (but not from Mark Hamill)
God-awful dialogue at times!
And a fairly thin plot.

I know I’ll go and see the next one, because, well, its Star Wars, but I had such high hopes after Rogue One…sigh

—Thread resurrection—

slimjim, I love Sussex but my other half is from Lancs, we’re looking at getting married and want to be able to buy a place where we can give our (to be arranged) children a similar upbringing to the ones we had. I’m from farming stock so grew up in some pretty nice surroundings, and Nat’s family used to own a smallholding near Ramsbottom.
It’s just too bloody expensive down here, and while we’ve got a good group of friends we’re not able to make the most of them as I’m just too busy at work. When we do find spare time we tend to drive 4-hours up the M6 to the lakes/dales to walk anyway, so it would save a drive if we could move!
I appreciate that moving would likely be a one-way trip, and a potentially huge lifetime earnings pay-cut, but there’s more to life than being rich, especially if you don’t have the chance to enjoy your hard-earned!

zippykona and poolman, I’m a vet, so if it all goes belly up we could move again and come back down towards the south. I haven’t been offered the position up north yet, but it looks a cracking job, similar salary, more holiday, better quality of life and a slightly less insane out-of-hours rota (I’m current on a 1 in 2ish summer weekend rota (March-September) which is wearing a little thin.
I need to be sure I’m moving for the job, and not the location, but there not a lot I don’t like about the idea at the moment.

My other half is works in the NHS so again, is pretty flexible with location, and can locum for as long as she needs to find the right job. Apparently Preston is a good hospital, but to be honest if needs be Manchester is not that far away on the train if she want to work at the Children’s Hospital there.

What we’re looking for is a detached house (well, maybe no immediately, but thats the intention!) with decent access to walking, MTB and road riding. Would also need to be able to walk a dog straight from the door as we can do that at the moment and it would be a pain to lose that luxury!

I’d be going up first, and into rental for the time being, so there’s no rush to find somewhere to buy!

Watch out, could be a mineshaft!!
“woman has her slow-draining bath to thank for revealing a mineshaft under her house.”

You could thank your radiator in the end!

On a more serious note we had an old cast iron pip burst under our utility room floor (cold feed) which caused a large (but not enormously quick) leak similar to yours.

Anyone else finding it extremely slow loading pages?

Yep, and is disappoint it looks the same! I got all excited about and hour ago too!

No yards anymore? Down to 10 per packet in the supermarkets? The end is most certainly nigh!

As above, I dont know how you make it show when the light is on, but pressing the button once before turning the light on shows the model and battery percentage on my six pack.

Cheers chaps,
Lovely as the new iMac Pro would be I cant really justify the enormous £4900 price tag (even if it does come with more RAM, SSD storage and CPU as standard.
I just don’t think I’d ever stretch it enough to warrant the cost.
I mean, saving the money between the standard iMac and iMac Pro would buy me 14 days in Iceland taking photos, which is probably a much better life experience!

Jamba, spec is as follows;
27” 5K iMac
3.8GHz i5 (or 4.2GHz i7 for +£180)
Standard 8gb RAM (but will be upgraded to 16bg with a couple of stick of Corsair)
3TB Fusion (or 512 SSD for +£90 OR 1TB SSD for +£450)
Radeon Pro 580

Sadly the refurb store isn’t stocking the newer Kaby Lake chips (only the Skylake) and there IS a definite advantage to getting Kaby Lake.
I’m a little reluctant to drop a fair wedge of cash on a 2015 machine with older architecture.

I really liked Conn Iggulden’s Emperor (Julius Caesar) series when I read them a few years back. Seemed like a good balance of non-fiction politics and battles wrapped up with some completely invented characters to make the plot a little more humoured/easy going.

If you like the Emperor series he also has some on Genghis Khan (OK, but not as good as Emperor) and the War of the Roses (not read personally but my brother liked them)

For a non-fiction take on it I’d wholly recommended Rubicon by Tom Holland, and for a heavier (literally and academically) read SPQR by Mary Beard.

My personal preference is magic maps (http://www.magic.gov.uk/MagicMap.aspx), you cant plot points on it but it gives complete OS mapping in colour down to 1:25,000 level.
Hope that helps!

Cheers Mark, that’s great.
Richard

BBC say she’s no intention of going anywhere…
When was the last time I heard something was definitely, absolutely, not going to happen?

Perhaps she just doesn’t like it?!

Petplan or NFU. End of thread in my opinion!

What is wittertainment?

The first rule of wittertainment….

Professor X seems to be channelling his inner Dr Evil in that vid.
Replace “metal” with “laser” and he’s 90% of the way there!

Having spent many a night wild-camping on north Dartmoor I’d say that as long as you avoid the firing times (obvious really) you should be absolutely fine. I’ve spent whole weekends down there and not seen a soul.
However, you’ll need to be bleeding fit, or slightly unhinged, to venture off the paths on a bike. Even when its not saturated and a bog the grass is long and the ground very rough.
This is a shame as it does limit you from seeing some of the best (and most remote) areas of the moor.
Still, its a cracking part of the country, so good luck!

HAHA! I really aught to hate google and their professional tax-dodging ways…but then they do things like this and…I…just…cant…

As the phrase goes, nothing is foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
Guy is a bleeding muppet and hugely trying it on, but as said ebay appears to be full of these twonks nowadays but the feedback/resolution system is horribly skewed in their favour.
I’ve got a load of clobber in a heap waiting for ebay, but I am beginning to lose any enthusiasm for putting it on based on all the stories I see on here.

Commiserations to you, and hope you get it sorted soon

(but if you decide to go for the shoes and bombers approach please do keep us informed!)

Dont think much to your bargain toilet.. bet you end up peeing all over the floor… Is it French?

and

Did you have to sell the bog to buy it?

THIS is why I love STW, pure wit!
I really think if we pooled the comic power of the users on here we’d have enough material for a serious TV show!
Thanks guys, never fail to make me chuckle

In!
Let’s see if I’m any less hopeless at this as I was a fantasy football at university!

I’m still waiting for an email telling me collect my order from the store. I’m beginning to doubt it will come…

…and, out of stock! Sigh…

Thanks for the advice, and apologies for any offence taken over the lynching comment!
Unfortunately October is the earliest we can go, I work as a polo vet so the is absolutely no chance I’ll get any time off between, well, now and October!
One of the problems of the job, needing to cram annual leave in between Oct and March does limit ones destination choices a bit.
We’ve got a bucket list with places like Iceland, Norway and Yosemite on it but they will all have to wait…probably several years!

And wrong forum…mods?… (such an amateur)

Worked on my iPhone too, thanks for the PSA, got a decent supply now!

I love Rome, I have been lucky enough to go several times, normally around January when its bleeding cold, but deserted tourist-wise.
Echoing the above comments if you have limited time stick to the centre.
Pre-book your Vatican museum tickets or get there early as the queues can be biblical in their own right.
I didn’t use a multi-venue pass when I went AFAIK but could be wrong.
The Forum, Palatine Hill and Colosseum as all conveniently next to one-another.
Pantheon is awe inspiring (HOW did they build it when we were in mud huts!?), and there are fountains all over the place.

Also you MUST do Trajan’s Markets, they were tarting up the visitor centre last time I was there, but its a fascinating place to wander around, and still feels authentically and un-alteredly Roman!

I wasn’t over taken with the Spanish Steps, but then in January they don’t have any of the flowers out.

My off-the-beaten-track recommendation is the Basilica of San Clemente. The church is typically Italian, BUT THE CRYPTS beneath are incredible. You descend down a rather clautrophobic set of stairs to the old street level of Roman Rome, where you can walk though roman houses. There is a spring which still provides fresh water to the old houses which runs in a channel and the only Temple of Mithras in Rome.
We only went due to a tip off from a friend, but loved it!
Its located a short walk from the Colosseum, (Google Via Labicana, 95, 00184 Roma, Italy). Seriously, if you’ve got time take a look!

If you have a little time to spare I have two slightly further afield recommendations;

Tivoli – The palatial retreat built by Hadrian. It covers a huge site, sprawling with ruins of Imperial Palaces, store houses (which are enormous) lakes, statues etc etc. When were went it was conspicuously under visited which let you stroll around in relative solitude for Rome. It is a similar affair to the forum/Palatine, but much, much bigger. Not as much of it has been recycled into other buildings giving you a better idea of the scale and massiveness of the place.

Villa D’Este – Just around the corner from Tivoli, this was build by a (cough, corrupt, cough) cardinal as his summer retreat. The building itself is bizarre, now completely devoid of almost all furniture you are left instead with frescoes on almost every surface. Its now a quietly forlorn place really but would have been spectacular when at its height. The main reason to come here though are the wonderful water gardens and fountains which we spent a good couple of hours walking around.

Both can be accessed with a single bus from Termini railway station, and I think it takes about 45mins.
Don’t do this is you don’t have a free day in your schedule, save it to come back to, but it made a very pleasant break to the chaos of Rome when Mrs BD and I went.

I’ll try to find some photos, but I’m not sure where I’ve stored them…