Cool, always fancied doing it myself a a tour sometime (when the time is right, job and life-wise).

If you decide to blog it, or get some photos up, then be sure to give me a shout. Would be interested to see how it goes.

Good luck 🙂

A, lol – Like all cats, it is clearly evil 😈

I've got a 5800, which I think is very similar to the 5230 – I really like it as a decent value smartphone. Virgin mobile do some cracking deals.

Ovimaps is an excellent free GPS for the car or walking, but not used it offroad for biking.

I've been eyeing up http://www.viewranger.com/ for a biking OS solution with the 5800. The only problem is that the bike mounts I've seen for Nokia phones look a bit poor, but it is very much do-able. In theory, it should be an ideal solution as the Nokia phones are built tough.

Older anthems work fine with 100mm, in fact better than fine, they are brill.

100mm forks used to come stock on NZ specced Anthems rather than 80mm.

120mm would be pushing things on the older model methinks…

Saw him last night in Tunbridge Wells. I think he's being a bit harshly judged. Comes across as a seriously nice down-to-earth guy – doing what he loves.

Incredible mental and physical stamina. Very impressive and good that he is getting recognised. Fair play.

Maybe go see him on tour and understand where he's coming from?

The iphone is a beautiful piece of electronics, but it does suffer from poor battery life and below-par camera. It is also very expensive.

The 5800 is a good phone and much cheaper. If cost is a priority then go for the 5800. It has loads of features, but out of the box it is lacking visually. The latest update improves the phone overall considerably and combined with a nice skin like Aanex it is an enjoyable experience. Battery life is very good for it's class. Generally lasting 2-3 days with wifi and media usage.

If money is no object and slick usage is a priority go straight for the iPhone. If it's value you want, then the 5800 wins hands down.

@u02sgb Ah fair play. They are cracking bikes, so I'm sure you'll have a blast!

I'm wondering if a back to back test ride on a Trance X might be worth considering, as it sounds perfect for what you want with all the same benefits of the Maestro suspension? Just a thought…

Went to see this last night with the girlfriend.

3d is slightly underwhelming after seeing Avatar recently. Script was a bit weak and CG effects not anywhere near the same league.

The acting is decent, but overall it seems a little bit watered down. Possibly the Disney influence. Burton doesn't build much of an affinity with the characters, although the Mad Hatter is carried off well by Depp and H Bonham-Carter does a cracking job as the Red Queen. Probably taking some influences from Queenie in Blackadder.

Go see it if interested in Disney's modern take on the Alice tale or 3d experience. Decent family experience. Nothing groundbreaking though imho.

Wow, that really is bargaintastic!

Cheers, useful info. I do a bit of mixed driving, so motorway driving is a factor to consider. Will see if I can do a test drive down a dual carriageway.

Wondering about noise levels. Also, What's it like for overtaking on the motorway? Does it struggle with the small engine? It's unlikely to carry more than 1-2 people.

Thanks 🙂

Some very interesting points of view here, what I was looking for really – particulaly people's tolerance levels and expectations of management in the workplace.

FWIW – I think I come across to most people as a sincere and level headed chap. Which is probably why I didn't get booted out of the door. But yeah, Van Halen you are probably right, he no doubt thinks I was a bit of a nob-head. But a useful, straight-talking and honest one.

ART – That's the kind of situation that I wonder would come about. Useful advice and insight though, so many thanks for sharing.

Littlest Hobo – It did cross my mind that my point may not go down well, but I had more to win than lose by being upfront and candid. With regards to your friend, I wonder if that was entirely legal? Shouldn't there be more of a disciplinary process in place?

Cheers.

Many thanks for your insight folks, even the mtfu ones (trademarked of course by stw).

Rightplace – Feedback from the guys there was general appreciation for the fact that I had been forward with the md and had a frank discussion. The points were ones that several of the folks there had wanted to raise themselves, but had not had the right forum, or preferred to keep quiet for one reason or another. To me that doesn't suggest a good long term relationship with the workforce, sadly.

Overall, 3 months sounds like a sensible milestone, but I value my job satisfaction highly, so it may be shorter.

oxnop – good luck mate!

M6TTF – Established web agency in the South, reasonably well known. Appreciate your comments. Working late is not a problem, it's the method used to motivate staff that I disagree with.

Cheers.

TJ – Having spoken to colleagues many of these issues are longstanding and widely acknowledged, so possibly not easy to change.

TC, genesis, project – Thanks for the solid advice guys. All good points and kind of the lines of consideration I've also been on as well.

Going to digest and have a think.

Good points TJ.

Trying to get him to clarify briefs but get items fired at me ad hoc. Micromanaging may improve slightly, but suspect not a huge amount.

I was a little taken aback with the work attitude, especially as I don't mind working o/t, just on my own terms i.e. dedication should be earned and not forced imho…

You cannot walk out after 1 week IMO, jobs can change dramatically in that time. I would definately stick it out a bit longer and see what happens.

Thank you MC. It's not so much the role that is in question, more the MD's attitude and whether I can work with him tbh.

I would probably say the same but I have a feeling that it is going to be a difficult relationship.

There is simply no way I could cope with a relationship with someone who was happy to accuse me of hitting them when I hadn't. Absolutely no way in hell. I'd be sucking up the heart-break and moving on, no question about it. Sorry to be brutal.

Agree wholeheartedly. Personally, I would move on now and take this as a early warning. You don't need someone unstable in your life, eventually it will lead to another unhappy situation. The insecurity will no doubt become worse as your lives become more and more entwined. Not the kind of behaviour you would expect from a long-lasting relationship.

However.. Stumpyjon does offer some sound advice.

Best of luck mate.

Fasthosts and Streamline are effectively the same (Streamline are resellers). Expect decent control panels (Streamline's is much superior in looks and user experience) but you will get poor to average speed & performance. There is quite a bit of downtime – particularly if you are running a database or php site (like a forum or Content Management System e.g. WordPress or Joomla). Steer well clear if that's the case.

One.Com have quicker servers but their control panel is too limited for more advanced functions. No experience with support.

5 quid hosts are the best all-rounders I've come across in terms of speed vs price, but they are email support only. They are helpful & very quick to respond, but not the best if you want hand-holding (i.e. call centre support). They are no doubt resellers, as their servers are US based, not that it's an issue as far as I'm concerned.

Hope that helps…

The linux version is ace, like you say. Much quicker than Firefox, but sticking to FF and Safari on the mac for now I think.

Can you try installing from a USB stick?

I use a Mac at home / work for design and I love them for their functional design and usability. Much less time is spent messing around with updates and virus/malware scanning.

However, unless you have a hole burning in your pocket, or you want to use it as a media creation tool (for which they are very good) then you might be better spending your money on a good PC.

Otherwise, Ubuntu could be worth a look in like GrahamS suggests.

Try one at a mac store, or PCWorld, you might love the feel of them straight away.

On a side note..you might want to consider trying Xubuntu for the 256mb machines if things are a bit sluggish

Bewl is closed at this time of year. If you want something local, then you could try Bedgebury. Although it's not very challenging, it's good for a blast. Actually it will be a bog at this time of year, so might be wise to give it a miss.

Head over to the Surrey Hills like Geetee suggests for decent riding 🙂

I have 100mm rebas on a 2006 anthem and it handles very nicely. Better than the 80mm it was designed around imho. In New Zealand they used to fit 100mm forks to their anthem range – everywhere else was fitting them with 80mm. I think the kiwis had the right idea.

About 6 inches here in Tunbridge Wells, Kent

Very few cars on the roads at 8.30am

As Dick Barton says, the beam pattern is very good and obviously they are pretty bright.

Something that often gets missed out in reviews is the light colour, which is slightly more yellow than a lot of LED lights. I much, much prefer this as it gives better depth perception than 'white' LEDs imho. Personal preference of course.

Trout's light looks good and I would like to test a Exposure light side by side, but would I buy a Vision 4 again? Definitely.

Magicshine/DX for night riding on the cheap with a few mates
Hope/Exposure/Troutlight if you are serious about night riding and want an investment.

I would say absolutely NO don't send the mail. That will undermine her authority and position in her bosses eyes. Put yourself in her shoes and then think how you would feel about her mailing your boss to ask him to take it easy on you. It's like a letter from your mum.

Agree with this completely

Perhaps start looking around (i.e. browsing not applying) for alternative jobs on her behalf. Pick and choose the best ones and present them to her. Upload her CV to a few online job search sites? It's difficult to think about changing jobs when there's a lot on one's plate. If someone's helping with a search it can really get things moving.

Go for a 2-3 week holiday abroad, if you can, asap. It can give you some fresh perspective and renewed impetus.

By the time one's health falters through stress it is too late and can sometimes take years to get over – mentally and physically. Best of luck.

CaptainFlashheart – Member
+1 for that! Current main bikes are a Giant and a Spesh. VFM and ride quality, second to none. Niche-stroking-Willy-waving-look at me status, do I care?

Exactly!

dobo – Member

What a beastie eh…

I am loving that setup dobo…looks fast!

2006 XTC SX, now my winter hackbike (shame I can't ride it but that's another story).

About half of my bikes have been Giants in the 20 years I've been riding and I always end up going back to them. Ride quality and VFM they rock.

Other bike is an Anthem. Love it!

Lightlane is a pretty cool futuristic idea. Whether it will catch on is another matter:

http://www.lightlanebike.com/design_01.html

flipiddy, i tried that link. out of stock but suggests it at other places including a link. but……the link takes you to a labelmaker or something.

any idea where you can still get that model in stock?

Try this one…ridiculously cheap deal for the Brother printer at £79, which includes 4 whole replacement sets of cartridges…

Brother MFC-465CN – An excellent all in one printer, fax, copier, scanner – I'm a designer so need reasonable results when at home, this fits the bill and at the price it is an absolute steal…the 4 colour ink cartridges are a decent size and can be replaced for not much wedge.

Had a Canon MP series all in one before that was a big disappointment as the paper feed kept screwing up.

PC for surfing,gaming,music and everything else you can possible think of,including business and media

I'm surprised PC's are still used for gaming when generally the experience sucks (granted, Steam was heading in the right direction last time I used it). Consoles have become so good these days there is just no contest – PC gaming is a niche for hobbyists.

My friends and I gave up on PC's for gaming 4 years ago (we used to run and admin Quake3, Halo & Unreal servers) and haven't looked back. No configuration worries, no upgrade cycle every 18 months and a superior online experience. Love it.

So for the best all-round experience, basically what you really meant was:

Xbox/PS3 for Gaming…

A Mac for business, media, surfing, music and everything else you can possibly think of… (although you can play games)

Right? 😉

Burn works really well as a freebie for OSX http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/Pages/English/home.html

Otherwise, like folks have said before, Toast 10 does everything very well indeed.

No probs Geoff. Happy to help out 🙂

Surprisingly unseasonal temps down Kent way. Weather needs to get properly miserable.

No probs Geoff. Hope you're sitting comfortably 🙂

In Acrobat Pro go to Advanced>Document Processing>batch processing.

You should have a popup window called batch sequences.

Click the button called 'New Sequence' and give it a name when prompted

A new panel will appear – Click on 'Select Commands' and scroll down until you get to an option saying 'Security' on the left hand side. Then click 'Add'. You can include any other options from the list in the same way (such as watermark) to run at the same time as the Security settings.

Click on the grey triangle next to Security, which should have appeare d in the Right Hand Panel. A drop down called 'Security Method:None' will appear. Highlight this and then click 'edit'.

A new pane will appear with a dropwdown list. Select password security from the dropdown. This will reveal all of the security options for the PDF.

Check the box 'Restrict Editing and Printing'. Low-res printing will be okay for most purposes. You will can enter a password and so on. You also have the option to restrict changes to the pdf, so might be worth selecting 'none' for this.

When you have okayed the settings and then closed the panel behind, you will be returned to the original 'Edit Batch Sequence' screen. Under '1. select sequence of commands' you should now see 'security' has been added with your personal settings.

Under option 2. 'Run Commands on' you can select the folder with all of your pdf files in and 3. 'Select Output Location' is fairly self explanatory.

When finished this has set up a preset, so you can OK it and return to the main batch sequence menu. Select your preset and 'Run Sequence' and that should be it.

Hope that wasn't too much waffle. Drop me a line andrew_brough(at)hotmail.co.uk if there's anything.

OK, it can be done very easily and quickly if you have Acrobat professional. It will stop import into Photoshop/Illustrator and hence protect your contents from someone's grubby mitts. It will keep the vector data so the filesize will remain the same without losing quality.

If you have Acrobat Professional I will run through it, otherwise will spare the 5 min key bashing typing it out!

🙂

As far as I'm aware PDFs don't store any data as vectors….. it's all raster. But I may well be wrong! As you say there are a number of apps that will batch convert PDF to JPG but don't know if that's any good for you.

PDFs come in both Raster and Vector formats, depending upon where the original data has come from i.e. Raster from Photoshop, or Vector from Illustrator.

Vector is generally lower in filesize and scalable without losing quality, so I would think vector pdf would be the best medium to keep the documents in, rather than converting to PS?

I'm pretty sure you can enable security on a pdf to stop import of said pdf into illustrator, etc.

Maybe create a droplet to batch convert the pdfs to the same security settings…quite interested myself now, will have a play around and shout if I find anything useful.

Larger Hard Drives do make sense for some people – not just for music, but because you can install the actual game onto the HD rather than run straight from the DVD. Cuts down on noise significantly and speeds up load times. I've got a 60gb HD and along with a few demos and installed games it didn't take long to fill it up. Obviously you can delete stuff you don't want though…