I think they might be Al Bilal, Lal Haweli and maybe Sanam, but I’m not 100%.

Can’t remember the names, but in general I think the two/three medium sized ones (smaller than shere khan) on the left hand side of wilmslow road (as you’re going out of town) are best. I don’t rate shere khan at all, it’s like uncle ben’s, and the first one you get to (royal naz?) is sh1te (that was a while ago mind).

Hope your mate’s OK.

If it’s an old phone you might be able to just google the phone model and “unlock code” and find something. I was after one for my phone recently but it’s too modern unfortunately.

I’d say it depends on what your trails are like. If you’ve got super smooth trails with perfect transitions from one jump to the next then it doesn’t really matter.

If you need to put a couple of pedal strokes in between jumps, like at my local jumps, then if you’re geared too low you won’t be able to build up more speed.

If it’s just for jumping I’d say go with a higher gear and push your bike back up the hill.

I changed over from using SPDs to flat about a year ago. For me the main difference is that with SPDs I moved the bike around by jumping upwards and bringing it with me, whereas with flats you’ve got to push down and forward a lot more, to bunnyhop properly, to get traction on the pedals (climbing or descending). If you try jumping upwards with flats on I find that you just jump off the bike, which is bad when going fast downhill or over a drop.

Find out what’s on at Bowery Ballroom, it’s not tiny but it’s really cool and feels quite intimate. The Guggenheim combines art and architecture nicely. Statten island ferry is free, it’s about 45 mins to an hour each way. There’s not much on staten island but the ferry gives OK views of the statue of liberty and good views of the city, you’ll get good views from some of the bridges though and it might not take as long. The rockerfeller centre (“top of the rock”) is good because you can see the empire state building from it.

I’m on orange, I have a nokia N82, symbian, decent phone (crap network from orange where I live though). Has wifi and GPS, and you can use Nokia Sports tracker which is decent, upload your rides, plots distance, elevation etc. Good camera with good flash too.

I used to use a fairly crumby one on my old jeep. I always felt a bit nervous but it never broke. That famia one looks pretty solid to me. I left mine on all the time and just slung a bike lock round it into the wheel.

One minor point about those ones that hang around the back of the wheel is that if you reverse into something with your extended bike rack, the bit that goes round the wheel gets pushed through the back window. Oops.

Bah, beaten to the punch. Stainburn is only 20mins from the A1 though.

For a mini trail centre experience you could try Stainburn, near Harrogate, or nip into Swaledale and do a bit round Reeth/Grinton area. Or just the other side of Kielder is Newcastleton, one of the 7 Stanes. I haven’t been but from what I’ve heard it’s not very gnar.

“tried running 1×9 on my heckler when I first built it up, the chain came off all the time”

“Were you using a ‘normal’ chainring though? Ie from a double or triple chainset. They’re designed to derail the chain with ease to aid gear changing.”

No, using an E13 g-ring.

Funny enough I just put gears on my hardtail today but there were no stops for a front mech. Will probably stick a chain device on. I think anything that gets used seriously off road will wang the chain about so much it’s bound to come off, and you can only shorten it so much.

I tried running 1×9 on my heckler when I first built it up, the chain came off all the time, and 2 failed attempts at chainguides later I caved in and bought a triple. So much for simplicity. Annoyingly you lose the chain more when you’re descending because it will be wanging about more anyway, and because you’ll be on the smallest sprocket meaning it’s under less tension.

I used one to repair a chainwhip.

I’ve got a dakine drafter. The helmet and pads clip on outside using pinch clip straps, so are easy to get at and don’t affect storage inside the bag. It’s a great bag, but I’m not too keen on the bladder that came with it.

Just a thought. Last year I started keeping all my work, photos, music etc on external, powered USB hard drives. A few weeks ago I plugged one in, and it was dead! I managed to buy an exact duplicate disc and replace the PCB controller, which resuscitated the disc thankfully, but it’s pure luck I managed to buy one with an identical PCB, and it’s fortunate that the problem was as simple as a shot PCB.

A USB hard disc is convenient, but if you want “permanent” storage then also consider a pro flickr account or some web hosting and keep them online, then they’re backed up etc and you can get at them from anywhere, or burn them to duplicate DVDs and keep them somewhere safe.

If you use Flickr you can upload a pic, then grab whatever size you want. Then again if you used flickr you wouldn’t need to email them.

You might not just be able to copy the files off the CD and run them off the disc, in which case…

Use isobuster or something to create a disc image of the Office installer disc (or maybe you already have it downloaded as an ISO/image??)

Copy this to an external USB drive/device.

Mount the ISO as a disc using MagicISO or MagicDisc or similar

Install as usual

I’d get one that was “light enough for the climbs yet burly enough for the downhills”. I haven’t found it yet.

I wear Kyle straits under Alpkit jeans no problem (I’ve got quite chunky legs and the original size M alpkit colab jeans). It gets a bit sweaty but not too bad. The bottoms are quite wide though so if you ride with a triple expect to get them caught.

The main issue is that it moves power generation away from petrol and onto central generation which in theory can come from any source (though of course this is mostly fossil at the moment)

To be fair though there is a lot of energy wasted in motor car with an internal combustion engine – ie the engine is constantly on, and is often revving way above the power needed to move it about. An electric motor can make smarter use of fuel regardless of where the fuel comes from.

Someone was telling me recently about an “electric” car which has a battery charged by a 125cc petrol engine. The engine runs constantly at the optimum speed/gearing for efficiency, which means it’s never revving wildly and it’s always converting its fuel to useful power.

2.4 mountain kings seemed thinner than 2.35 hi-rollers and felt really sketchy cornering. Dual ply hi rollers are good for avoiding pinch flats. Unless you are really concerned about traction I would go for 60a as the ST ones wear out very quickly (on peak district gritstone anyway) and give terrible rolling resistance, but they are very very sticky.

ST front and 60a rear sounds like a good idea. I would go with hi rollers though, they are ace.

Where is it? I heard a method on Gardeners’ Question Time \m/ which recommended putting a drinks can upside down over the nest. The ants move all their eggs into it, you take it away and feed the eggs to your koi carp or whatever. I doubt it works, like, but it sounded cool.

Either your laptop will need composite video out socket (yellow minijack), or your TV will need a VGA/DVi in.

Tim Westwood

The royal oak on kirkgate (as above) has reinvented itself as a food pub (as opposed to a “fighting” pub), I ate there recently and it was OK. Other than that I think the Unicorn and the Bull do food. The One Eyed Rat on Allhallowgate is a great real ale pub and has bar billiards. They don’t have a kitchen as far as I know but sometimes have barbies out in the big beer garden so you might want to ask – if the weather is nice this is the best place in Ripon to be drinking.

I am 5’10” and a little bit. I had a medium heckler (not a superlight I know, but of the same ilk), with a layback post and a 70mm stem. I found it uncomforatbly short on climbs and long rides. Obviously, ride one if you can, but if it’s for XC/all day type riding I think you’ll be best off with a Large.

What’s wrong with it in the wet? Slippy? I have never ridden on chalk!

Update: bought identical (model) disc, swapped PCB, spins, mounts, content all seems to be there and seems to be copying over a treat.
Cheers!

I suppose it depends whether you’re talking about pootling around or shredding gnarly lines. I’ve been thinking about this lately because I got busted by a gamekeeper yesterday on my favourite local cheeky trail. A lot of people cycle on this path, and it’s obviously that cycling on there does damage to the trail. If people are going to do it anyway then explaining to the landowner the reality of the situation, and offering your labour to help maintain the trail – in exchange for legitimising it – might be the way forward.

Being a member of the IMBA or CTC would strengthen your position. I reckon the RSPB are stingy Bill Oddy types though and will refuse to listen to reason.

I have a Symbian S60 phone, you can download loads of stuff from Nokia Mosh and various symbian sites. There might be less of a development community for windows mobile cos it’s not an open source thing. Also phones equipped with win mobile seem a lot less common than symbian or iphones. There’s bound to be something about though.

http://www.cio.com/article/195800/Seven_Fantastic_Free_Windows_Mobile_Apps

After about 60 magic mushrooms

It has to be said they are not the nicest tasting of nature’s bounty. Try some chanterelles instead.

Forgot these ones…. (made risotto with them!)

I had mushroom and spinach curry for tea last night.

Some shrooms I have picked and eaten (fo the h8erz)..

Om nom nom

I’m pretty sure it’s 200mm*57mm, or 8″ * 2.5″. That’s Mk2 not Mk1. I think some of them may have come fitted with a 190mm air shock which gave them less travel, but that might be boll0cks.

Thanks xherbivorex! Curiously, not being au fait with IT hardware nomenclature, I know the round object inside a disc drive as a “disc”!

Hi folks, have tried the tapping thing (“about as firmly as breaking an egg” was what I’d read). Should it free up if I do it repeatedly? I might try the freezer method but don’t have any airtight bags to hand.

I’m not hearing any noise at all and the thing starts flashing as soon as it’s turned on. If it was sticking wouldn’t I expect a short delay to get feedback or an initial motor event? I don’t leave it turned on other than when I’m working on it, and it’s failed to start properly after a period of maybe a couple of days to a week of not being used.

Samuri – when you say platters, what do you mean? The actual spinny metal bits? I thought you had to have a totally clean environment to do that (not a good description of my house). I was thinking of taking the PCB from the new one and putting it on the old one. There doesn’t appear to be any soldering on the connection.

Hi fellas, it’s a Samsung HD250HJ in a USB housing. The reason I think it’s the PCB is because when I power it up the LED just flashes continuously and the disc doesn’t spin (there is something on the board telling it to Flash, which seems like an error message). I’ve taken it out of the housing and tried it in a SATA-USB cradle and the same thing happens.

Data recovery firm quoted me £90 diagnosis and £390-590 data recovery. I think I have backups of all the important work stuff on that’s on it so this is a bit much to shell out.

Looked on Ebay but it has to be exactly the same PCB. I’ve ordered a replacement HD250HJ, but I’m still a bit concerned that it will have a different interface. We’ll see what happens!

It’s the Environment Agency who give out the licences but I gather this is a different agency in scotland. Maybe they won’t be such fascists about it! On the other hand I think the signal crayfish problem is worst in the Southeast of England.