Dogs at trail centres seems fine to me, as long as they're bike savvy. Seen a lot over the last few years, none have been any sort of problem.

Re; not running the dog too much – In the first two years it is worth avoiding running the dog over great distances as their young joints (hips especially) are prone to injury that could become costly in later life. After that, have at it!

I'm going to order one when they become available. I have a £2k MBP and a £500 iphone. I'm sick of working on the MBP, then stopping work and playing on the MBP. The iPhone is just too small to do lots of web stuff on in front of the TV. £600 (estimate for 64GB/Wifi only) is cheap when I think that the only other second computer I would consider would be a MacBook or another MBP, and it would only get used for web browsing 99% of the time.

If I owned cheap £400 notebooks like the majority of people, I might think the iPad was expensive. But as it is, it's a bargain.

As for not being able to install stuff that's not in the Appstore; I manage fine on my phone with this, never wanted anything that isn't there already. The iPad is an appliance, not a computer, all the fiddly bits are hidden from the user. If I wanted to muck about installing stuff after an entire day of writing software, I would have bought another machine years ago.

He's neither; he's a right dour little bugger.

They're the same as an 2009-2010 100mm Reba, just with different internals.

iPad seems like the ideal solution for a non-work machine. I use the same MBP for my work and for leisure, that gets kind of wearing when it's hard to separate the two areas of my life. Now the iPad allows me to do this without spending a whole heap of cash or putting up with some piece of plastic crap that is incompatible with the rest of my gadgets without a lot of fiddling.

Good to see some devils-advocate being played here, but a lot of it seems anti-Apple rather than con-iPad. If you don't like something, don't buy it.

Now, I'm off to play with the new iPad SDK.

It uses some of the marked-routes in a backwards direction, so I imagine the FC are keen to discourage people from riding it.

Rendez is an insanely grippy tyre, even more so than a high roller. Great choice.

The premier icon on the forum listings needs to be vertically-aligned with the text.

rOcKeTdOg – I think you can phone up and get the premier features if you already have a subscription.

Liking the arrows, a lot less distracting than the bolded names. Maybe a mouseover/alt-text saying 'premier member'?

Mark – Are classifieds donators acknowledged anymore? Sure there used to be a thread for this.

Some light reading to help you on your way: http://www.carronvalley.org.uk/

Premier members have their names in bold? Seems to break a few rules about readability doing that, but wth.

And sanity was restored.

bonj – Member
the biggest gripe tbh is if you want to quote somebody, you have to copy and paste, then do it manually – on phpbb it's just one click.

Not posting takes no effort at all. How about you try that?

Watching the fourth episode at the moment. Series only really got going in the third episode.

Good to see Walker back too. ;)

1/10 – You put too much effort into this, and didn't check facts.

Most are just a java shell wrapping a browser, with a custom icon.

If you find a way to run Java on an iPhone, give me a call. It's all Cocoa, real programming one of the best SDKs for any platform out there.

just ride the trails and don't worry about it. erosion adds character and often a good technical challenge to trails. i've never rode down a trail and thought "its too eroded, i can't ride it."

if you want pristine trails that are a piece of piss to ride then go to a trail centre.

IMO in most cases erosion makes for a less technical, less enjoyable trail. Features are flattened by the water, and lines widened by the above mentioned puddle avoidance.

With TJ here; a lot of the Pentlands damage is caused by water following bike tracks and washing all the loose material away. While I can name areas where most of the damage is horse/4×4 related, the majority of locations are due to pushbikes.

When it's wet I take the change to go explore patches of woodland I've not been to before, or ride in quiet ones I've found before. I certainly avoid open hillsides when it's this wet.

Failing that, get your road bike out.

acorlett – is north third not rideable?

there's a ride organised on uk-mtb for there on sunday morning which you'd be welcome to join … i won't be there but it's an 11am start at quarry road

Ah, so those trails are going to take yet more beating from mincers. Grew up riding those trails, all the man-lines are now overgrown, and the straight-down lines are rubbish and/or chewed to nothing.

5'10 and 9st.

Own them with some Bombers.

You mean Macbook Pro.

I put a Intel X25M 160GB SSD in my Macbook pro 2.4/4GB and noticed a huge difference. Startup is 16s from 42s, I can click on every icon on my dock at the same time, and nothing will take longer than 1s to load. Mail loads in 1s as opposed to about 10s. Even open-office opens in about 5 seconds rather than 20.

You don't notice it per-sae, but when you go back to a machine with a spinning platter drive, you will be wanting to throw it out the window in the first minute or so.

Best single-upgrade I've made in 10 years.

The point of releasing 4.0 now is that it's likely it has features which share parentage with the iTablet or whatever it's going to be called.

Graham – Love the name!

You can do it via email, have done it several times over the years.

I assume all overweight pilots/cabin crew will have to seek alternative employment?

India Air did this recently: http://www.ukmedix.com/weight-loss/weight%20loss-indian%20airlines.cfm

I've been waiting years for fatties to have to pay extra to fly. IMO they should have a weight-graded pricing system, where heavier people pay more to compensate for the extra fuel needed to haul their fat asses skywards.

My other (favourite) option is you get a set weight limit for everything; you + luggage. Hell, I could fly with my bike for the weight of the average UK person alone.

While I realise that we don't want to encourage crash-dieting caused by passengers attempting to make cutoffs, it could definitely be beneficial all round.

Have I told you about my belly tax where larger people are made to pay for the extra CO2, medical costs and scenery ruining visuals they impose on the rest of us? ;)

Disclosure: I'm 59kg despite eating like a horse. Always have been.

And folks wanting the latest will hold on those few months. Early leaked pictures doesn't affect that.

It kind of does; I've just put off replacing most of current XTR drivetrain, and have sold all my spares that won't be used in the next year of racing. Why? Because pictures of an XTR double chainset appeared, and my knees cryed with joy at the lower Q-factor.

After I first posted the XTR pictures in a bust of enthusiasm, I had a brief discussion with Chipps via email, with basically the same argument as the OP received being used (except with me it was the Motorhead album, not Girls Aloud, not sure what ST are implying about the OP ;) ). The copyright argument stinks of DMCA, or at least strong feelings from the copyright owner in the past, and a small business such as ST would do well to follow these and protect their future livelihoods. We definitely have to respect that.

Mark Anderson
Steve Beckett
Adrian Dawes
Eleanor Francis
Tom Sinclair
Kevin White

Must be staff (a lot of staff to be skiving at once), or just using the name for a bit of fun, as none of the are on the team roster.

Just been round Blairadam. The usual in the trees (mud and roots, ace). Ice on the forestry roads, but nothing that isn't rideable.

Prefer XTR myself, for various reasons. Avoid the shadow/carbon-caged numbers though, not worth the extra money when you bang it off a rock.

I ran a set of the 5deg last winter. Loved them. Just feel like a big flat bar (which they are).

Had a few brief shots on the 11deg, feels more like a riser, but without the rise.

I'd highly recommend either.

68 or slacker is going to be a zero-chance find. 80mm frame with 100mm forks? Even then it's going to mess everything else up.

Here's mine, MSC Koncept Carbon, 20.57lbs in this build with no stupid weight-weenie stuff.

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Might be slightly out of budget mind.

Interested to see how you get on with them George, been thinking about some for the summer bike as I do like my tubeless.

Been running Gatorskins for the last two winters, found them to be very good, 1 puncture in two years, caused by a sidewall rip on a rock (short, very rocky, shortcut, oops). They seem as comfortable as the GP4000s on the summer bike, though I do use 25c on the winter bike as opposed to 23c on the summer bike.

Did that make any sense to anyone?

Microsoft make most of their money selling tools and licences to the enterprise market. Windows on the desktop is pocket-money in comparison.

Ran the same set for two and half years, will probably ride them till something starts breaking. 9st btw.

Review I wrote a while back: http://douglasfshearer.com/blog/wheel-review-stans-ztr-olympic-rim-american-classic-hubs

I'd stall till they offer you Campag.

If they don't and it's the new Ultegra 7900, then go for that, it's lovely.

Goan: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=glupton

See, where we come from we have these things called hills. Great fun.

Maybe a have a subforum for all the driving gods complaining about near misses and swerving pedestrians on their 'essential' journeys.