I saw this in Sainsburys car park the other day. The woman in the drivers seat looked like Mary off Coronation Street – post menopausal, asexual spinster, lives alone, probably owns cats… Lots of cats…

I’m usually of a fairly mild mannered disposition, but I wanted to drag her out of the car, stab her in the neck, then strap her to the bonnet before driving round village rear-ending slow moving vehicles, then taking her back to her smelly little house and setting fire to her in front of her cats.

But apart from that, stickers don’t really bother me…

how is that possible if it’s text on a path tool and i’m trying to copy in a vector shape?

Apologies, I’ve just tried this and it no longer works. It used to – in the good old days of Illustrator…

You can still do it in Indesign – you just copy a vector graphic (or anything) and paste it into a text box. You can then apply this to a path. It then treats it as text, you can kern, resize, baseline-shift with completely reckless abandon.

Not sure if I’ve interpreted it right, but are you after making wavy tire tracks? You could copy a small section and paste it as text on a path… Then just muck about with the kerning til it looks like a tire track.

You could then apply whatever bevel/emboss filter suits your needs.

In my gym-going days, lads at the gym nicknamed me “Smooth” because I have no chest hair…

I remember seeing a particularly attractive girl in a bar that I vaguely recognised from the gym, she was with 3 or 4 equally stunning friends so I thought I’d sidle over and chance my hand.

She introduced me with the unforgettable line “girls, this is Smooth”… The situation could have gone either way, sadly, it didn’t go my way! :oops:

I use a Caddy as an everyday vehicle and don’t find it compromised in any way. Interior is basic but comfortable, yes, it’s a bit noisier on the motorway but I plan to carpet-line the back to help this.

I can get 4 or 5 full bikes in the back, stood up, seats and wheels in situ, plus as much gear as I’ll ever need.

It’s big enough to get changed in if it’s lashing down and I can sleep corner-to-corner if need be.

I got the High Line version, so it’s got air-con, blue teeth, colour-coded parking sensing alloy wheeling loveliness… Wouldn’t change it for anything else!

Ooh, I’ll bear that in mind – I’m often in Clitheroe… Thanks!

Well, if ever there was going to be a winner, I think it would be Slow Old Git’s Septarian Nodule!

Thanks very much for that, I’ll print it off so I can give it to my nephew… He’s obsessed with stuff like that!

Cheers SOG! :)

Looking at it more closely, it makes far more sense than algal growth or roots – the shapes roughly follow the 5-sided form you get when rocks cool (Giant’s Causeway) or when mud shrinks as it dries…

Cheers Molgrips! Your theory sounds plausible, but I would have expected the stone to have appeared more sheered or cleaved had that been the case.

Unless it was a harder inclusion in some sedimentary rock and the patina formed after it had worn smooth…

It could be igneous, but it was in a river so it’s worn quite smooth. The colouring ‘appears’ to be the actual rock, although it is only on one surface.
It’s quite attractive colouring, even more so when it was wet which is what made me pick it up!

It’s definitely rock, hard and heavy. I found it in the River Ribble, Lancashire.

The stone is similar to a lot of the shale bed – a mix of slate, millstone grits and granites…

After 20+ years working as a graphic designer (10 years running my own business), I’ve opened a picture framing shop. I was looking for something that could run alongside my existing work; utilised some of my knowledge, skills and experience; and was completely different to my sitting-at-a-desk usual work.

I’m just over 6 months in and thoroughly enjoying it. I’m loving meeting a completely different type of person, whether it’s an old lady with a cross-stitch, local artists, or just families with kids’ photos. Makes such a refreshing change from whip-cracking deadline-pushing twunts!

Really enjoyed the challenge of learning a new skill, setting up a new business and now having a profitable pipeline of work. And I can’t recommend enough how nice it is to be able to ‘down tools’ when one job gets too much and do something completely different for a couple of hours…

The long term plan is to open a gallery and have business/career that will continue long after I’ve stopped wanting to design graphics.

I use one for time trialling but I wouldn’t want to use one for ordinary riding. They feel very wide and cumbersome when you sit upright – great when you ‘roll’ forward in an aero position, the prongs support your sitbones rather than squishing your barse like a regular saddle does, but I think I’d struggle with that style on an ordinary road bike.

If it’s just a case of drawing up what you have in mind, expect to pay £100-£150 depending on complexity and amount of revisions.

If you want a designer to give you advice on developing your visual brand, this will cost a fair bit more. But there’s more to a brand than a logo, so money spent now will be money well spent…

I like the Team Sky recipe… Pudding rice and cream cheese flavoured with cinnamon. Really easy to eat as they’re moist, I make a batch, wrap em in foil and freeze them.

Link

“Pulled” is just another word for sloppy presentation. Do it properly, and quit pulling my meat!

Gas it. If it dies, it was a canary.

I’m shooting at least 1 a day in my garden – they just keep on coming back…

I do, especially when I ride past shop windows or those gateway mirrors (less so with the gateway mirrors as I find the fish-eye effect rather unflattering).

I recently read Ian Banks last book, The Quarry. I’ve read all of his (non-sci-fi) books over the years and have enjoyed every single word he’s written.

I finished it on the plane home from a holiday a few weeks ago and cried for most of the flight: it felt like I’d lost a best friend. The obvious autobiographical nature of the book gave a typically Banks’ insight into his own view of life, his character, his illness and his impending death.

Very sad, but if you’ve ever read a Banks novel and identified with any of his heroes, this book should be on your reading list. Just don’t read the end in public!

A friend with a business in Manchester sent an employee out to deliver some car parts first thing one morning. He got a bit worried when the lad wasn’t back by brew time.

Later that afternoon he got a phone call from the lad saying the address was a house, not a garage.

He was in Norwich, he should have been in Northwich… God bless sat navs!

Anyway, has pratfall man been named? I want to twitstalk him and ruin his life like we did with sweary-range-rover-and-plastic-jacket-cafe-owning-small-dick dude…

Very simple, but do it like your original diagram with diagonal batons, not like Teasel’s. Use thicker timber for your batons, 3-4 sunk-head nails at each board/baton junction and angle your nails in all directions to avoid them popping apart at the first sign of a rain shower.

When I’ve made board-and-baton doors, I tend to make them long and then trim them with a rip saw so you get nice straight ends. Don’t forget to use a capping profile to protect the end grains at the top…

And as Goldfish says, don’t waste money on the highly planed stuff – if anything, rougher-sawn timber takes treatments better.

I blame all the bell ends…

Sainsburys tinned mackerel in spicy tomato sauce, is indeed spicy.

The French call paperclips “les trombones” because they look like little trombones…

I bet, if her professional pride allowed it, she could name hundreds more that didn’t turn their lives round.

offer to drop the charges in exchange for 6 months, or more, voluntary abroad with a charity organisaton, for example :

:lol:

Can anyone point me in the direction of a decent, law-abiding adult; a fine, upstanding member of society, who, as a youth, held a parent at knifepoint and threatened to slice their face off?

The reason I ask, is that I can name several people who did similar things as youths, who all ended up committing further offenses as adults. And I can name 2 off the top of my head that died before they got to their mid twenties.

They were all good lads though ;)

For what it’s worth, I have very relevant experience of a similar situation, the difference being that i was the sibling of a “wrong-un”. My parents went down the “protect at all costs” route and the costs have been immeasurable. Still hasn’t ended well 25 years down the line – it was never going to.

In my experience, forcing the offending party to face up to the consequences of actions would have had far better results than protecting them from the law, mental health professionals, social services etc.

I won’t comment any more on my experiences as it’s a very personal thing, suffice to say, my opinions were hard won. Very hard won.

I think people need to wake up and smell the coffee… It’s all well and good sitting at your keyboard and patting yourself on the back for being such a lovely fluffy human being and offering nicey nicey advice on how OP and his boy can go camping and fishing at weekends, bond together and live happily ever after… IT AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN!

This little scrote disappears for weeks at a time, taking all sorts of drugs and breaking all manner of laws, and only comes home when he needs to eat, sh*t in a clean toilet and scrounge some cash.

People don’t just *suddenly* pick up a knife and threaten to slash another human. Sure, it may be the worse thing he’s done, but i’d bet my house he’s committed other violent crimes against others before.

A “Good Lad” simply doesn’t threaten to kill someone!

My OH is in the Police. Yesterday, her and her colleagues sent 4 “good lads” down for over 100 years. She sat through hours of reports in court about how they were decent kids that had just “got in with the wrong crowd” but they conspired to lure another man to a meeting place and stabbed him 28 times until he died.

They were well-known to Police, having managed to evade prosecution by intimidating victims and witnesses with ever more horrific assaults, stabbings, shootings and murders. The only crimes they’d ever been convicted of were minor assaults (years ago) and minor drug offenses.

A wrong-un is a wrong-un. Perhaps a custodial won’t do him any good. But it’ll do more good than letting a nasty little scrote think he can get away with a knife assault.

Christ Andy, those screws!! 8O

I had another visit to the consultant on Tuesday, X-rayed it again and said everything was as it was. So he’s still going down the conservative treatment route.

He recommended getting out of the sling a few times and flexing my elbow and raising my shoulder forwards and outwards. Outwards isn’t too painful and I can get to about “20-to” but lifting it forward flexes the 2 parts of my clavicle and hurts like hell!

Can’t seem to find much info about early physio, can anyone offer any advice on what they did? (it’ll be 2 weeks on Sunday since the accident)

Thanks!

I love these threads, I actually LOL’d when I read this line:

Is it possible to sit him and everyone down in a calmly manner to show him love and to tell him of the hurt he has created for the family?

Thought I was watching Loose Women for a moment!

And now we’ve got someone whose legal training amounts to sitting in a public gallery offering advice on how a man might perjure himself in order that his violent and potentially dangerous son is spared the prison sentence he deserves?

I think Cougar hit the nail on the head first time. He might be prone to bouts of little-Hitlerism; abusing his Mod tag to win arguments; wielding his ban hammer in a particularly prejudiced fashion; but in this instance, I don’t think he should let the bleeding hearts shame him into watering down his initial reaction.

To all the people who’ve offered advice, how would you feel if this little wrong-un actually stabbed someone somewhere down the line? What if he stabbed one of your loved ones?

My advice would be to wash your hands of him, tell him he’s on his own and protect what’s left of your family from ever having to deal with anything like this again!

Let the law deal with him – he didn’t just commit the offense against the OP, he committed an offense against all of society when he broke the law and behaved in a way that we should NOT tolerate.

Thanks for all the words of encouragement, it’s good to hear other people’s experiences even if all it proves is what a wide range if variables there are!

I spoke to a friend who’s a GP who recently specialised in sports injuries. He said universal plating for athletes is dictated by sponsors’ needs rather than medical need. In my case, there’s around a 5% chance the bones won’t knit… That 5% is too much risk for a pro!

Interestingly, he said that they’ve moved away from plating on jockeys – the fall off so often that future breaks are inevitable. If they’re plated, the clavicle doesn’t break and it separates their AC joint which takes longer to repair!

I’ve managed to avoid opioid painkillers and I’m trying to reduce the ibu/paras as I’m getting the old “painkiller gut”!

It’s a week since the accident now, and my ribs and whiplash are settling down, and I’m back at the fracture clinic on Tuesday. I’ll report back!

Thanks again, and a speedy recovery to anyone else in the same boat!

G

I think I had a better nhs experience than most! The paramedics were fantastic, they even came back to see me at the end if their shift… Felt like I was in an episode of Casualty!!

I got a referral for the frac clinic for the following day, in and out – including X-rays – in an hour.

The only blip was a very young and inexperienced nurse fitted the sling without dressing a particularly deep wound on my elbow so my girlfriend had to remove the sling (big ouch), clean it out and dress it before refitting.

They took me to Lancaster infirmary – my only other hospital experiences have been at Preston – and I have to say, if you’re gonna get off a bike at 40mph, do it near Lancaster!!!

I’m in the Preston area, the crash was on the decent off Boundary a Fell in the a Trough of Bowland.

Funnily enough, some people from Bury lent me a blanket, put me in their van and drove me to the mountain rescue centre as we were struggling to make contact with the emergency services. They even took my bike to a local cafe so it could be collected later by a club mate. Can’t thank them enough!!

Cheers farmer, I’ll look up those vids and leaflets you mentioned. Thanks, hope I recover as quickly!

How old are you by the way? I’m 41..

I’ve got the full poly-sling with velcro straps over-the-shoulder and round-the-back. seems to hold it quite well…

I’ve had 3 ortho consultants advise against pinning, and whilst the first one seemed a bit dithery, the second and third opinions have settled my mind a bit.

Like I said, the worst bit is lowering myself onto my back to sleep, and then getting up in the morning without the aid of painkillers!

A lot of that pain seems to be coming from badly bruised ribs so I’m hoping that will ease soon.

It was a 40mph crash – badly repaired road bucked me off – so every joint is bruised, twisted or whiplashed!

[edit] Thanks Geetee, I’m “codiene intollerant” so cocopops are off the menu. I’ve been prescribed Tramodol for emergencies but I’m trying to cope with ibu/para…

They filled me with Morphine in the ambulance which was OK… I was violently sick but I’m not sure if it was shock, pain, the concussion, the morph or all-of-the-above that caused that!!

I’m in the north-west and unable to drive! So Ipswich is a bit impractical… What does this place do?

G

All useful stuff Cursing, I reckon he’ll be a far better wheelier for spending a bit of time learning the various components of a good wheelie! I’m looking forward to the first vid of him hooning round on his back wheel…

How did the Wheelie Schoolers get on over the weekend? Anyone cracked it?

Controlling speed takes a fair bit of confidence. Most people find they just get faster and faster – this is because they tend to pedal harder to stop the front end from dropping, hence it’s far easier on an uphill gradient where you can use the gradient to moderate your speed.

When you get used to feathering the brake, you’ll learn to control speed by leaning it back *just* past the balance point and then using the brake. Learn to wheelie uphill first though!