If you are not on a defined contribution pension then a lot of pensioners will have to be millionaires just because of the assets they need to accrue in their pension to support paying out into old age, plus their house value.

How will means testing affect them (not just for winter fuel, but also for insulation grants, etc), as they may look rich now but in fact their accrued assets can’t support anywhere near the level of pension someone from the public sector will get.

Bing satellite imagery seems to be a few years older than Google

This guy rides a lot of stuff reachable from the North Cardiff area, as I think that is where he is based.

why Wales just out of interest?

because it is God’s country?

People here in the south are very friendly – using that criteria rights off large parts of England or Scotland I reckon.

If you plan a bridleway route up here assuming that you will be able to ride it on a horse then you’d be pretty foolish, whereas there is plenty of gravel possibilities without encountering rockiness, such as through St Gwyno Forestry or all the wind farm tracks that are present, as I said.

There are routes listed on the great Glamorgan way site as rideable and cycleable but they would a challenge for an Olympic xc rider even, with the steepness and huge gulleys and drops cut by the motorcycles. Take a horse on one of those bridleway so and I’d be surprised if you weren’t thrown at some point and/or the horse was injured.

And in places the mapped routes don’t even exist, whoever mapped it out and put it on the site clearly is a lazy fecker who has just assumed there’s a route there by probably looking at a map from when the old-time miners used to walk from valley to valley to get to work.

I’m in Ystrad in the Rhondda valley (one of them). Lots of gravel as there are tracks all over for the wind farms. Trails in the ‘mountains’ opposite me, in Clydach Vale, Treorchy, stuff up nearer Treherbert – but it is all a bit steeper than trail/XC so riding alone in the midweek might not be the best idea – you can find videos on YT:

Smilog about 20 minutes down the road:

Barry Sidings a bit closer – also a lot of steepness and I’ve meet a guy that gave up mtbing after a bad fall there!

Afan about 30 minutes drive away although you can join on to Skyline up near Treherbert.

Bike Park Wales about 30 minutes away – if you live closer you can get a local season pass.

Cwmcarn a bit further.

Bridleways don’t really exist – they are all pretty rocky and chewed up by local illegal motorbikes going offroad.

Spectacular scenery, more so that down toward Caerphilly, but there’s lots of riding down there as well so that’s probably a better option.

I’m not even sure if I’d trust blind testing – if you play a song once from a digital source once, then play it again with the same kit I don’t think it would be exactly the same as something outside of your control will have changed

should really be double blind – unless you can find someone who is completely disinterested in what they are switching, or use some audible signal to indicate that it’s changed.

And you need to do the tests multple times with random switches to prove that you can reliably identify the better cable, or not. Don’t do things like open the windows/doors, drink a glass of water, blow your nose, etc in the middle of the test.

There’s no point argueing about what should or should not be happening – double blind test it – if you can reliably tell a difference then that’s when you need to look for why there are differences, and if you can’t then that’s when you wonder abouot how powerful the various forms of expectation bias are.

Blind test, or double blind if the switcher has any influence on you, like saying anything.

With coax digital interconnets it is hard to get the correct impedance at the plugs apparently – they should be BNC but aren’t. That can have some effect apparently if it is viewed as a transmission line.

But, whatever, blind testing is needed.

WHen I was at sixth form college in about 1982 the PE teacher set up a small court indoors at lunchtime with portable cricket stumps holding up a low-level net up across a badmington court, and with wooden bats we played something that was like pickleball doubles – not sure where he saw the idea but it was a lot of fun.

Matrix is like the cheaper version of the Zero-G I had – I commuted for years on my Zero-G, with 35 minute rail journeys included. Similar to the Jack, more of a mountain bike instead of a commuter setup.

Apparently you can put wax on the joint to decrease the chance of creaking, or maybe LPS-3 spray which is pretty waxy.

I had a Dahon Zero G which was pretty good but still creaked from the hinge.

What about putting those S&S couplers on your favourite frame, or buying something with them on?

Don’t dismiss doing eye exercises – people slag off the Bates method but I started doing some similar exercises years ago when trying to manage my exposure to CRTs and flickering flourescant lights whilst working as a software engineer, and they have kept me off glasses except for a minimal prescription for night driving. Still using 32inch 4k monitors comfortably at 100 or 125% zoom and 1m viewing distance at age 60, after 38 years of working with computers.

I move my eyes through full travel for 60 reps up and down, then left and right, then up and down at full extension on the left and then on the right, and it has that ‘muscle-stretching’ feeling to it. Eyes feel much fresher after the reps at full extension.

Then I will do the focus-on-your-finger then focus-on-a-faraway-item for more reps, which certainly makes a difference after a few days of doing it.

And try to avoid phone or tablet usage where the screen is too close, such as in bed.

A lot of opticians will dismiss doing these but some will say it is sensible. It’s worked for me.

Can you adjust the volume level on your power amp then, that’s unusual.

Is that a technical term ?

Seems to be a term that is recognised in by developmental biologist.

If you ignore Andrew Gold in this video, Dr Emma Hilton explains the problem well, and I seem to remember a very in-depth explaination of something similar in this forum by someone more knowledgable than me on this same issue :

Raygun’s performance was massively disrespectfull to actual athletes that have trained hard for the olympic ganmes, and all the talented dancers that wanted to represent Australia, but lost somehow to her limited talents that managed to get her selected. That’s the reason she’s got the hate, not some misogynistic reasons.

And for Imane Khelif, the simple solution is just for them to publish their chromosomal tests to show that they are indeed XX and don’t have any ‘male advantage’, or if they are XY then why they do not have ‘male advantage’. The rules for gender identity in society and for gender identity in sport cannot be the same, you cannot have females with ‘male advantage’ competing against females without ‘male advantage’.

Well I bought a different iron but the diamter of the bit was larger than I was expecting so the knife attachment from this one wouldn’t fit.

I tried drilling out the centre of a rivnut and then cutting the side out to make a split collar in order to fit it to the other iron and let it clamp down the knife, but the rivnut is too stiff to comply.

So I’ve sent a photo in and the packer is going to have to pay the price :-(

I expressed my reluctance to reply if it was going to result in punishment, so hopefully they will go easy on them.

Play them at their own game by demanding to speak to their boss as they have failed to correctly train the packer. See how they like being punished. Then do the same to the boss. See how many people you can cause to be punished!

If it had been from Japan I would then be worried about someone commiting suicide because of losing face !

quote]Back when contactless was in short pants you’d to enter your PIN every few transactions. I can’t remember the last time I had to do so outside of a cash machine.[/quote]

Happens quite a lot of a friend who has Alzheimer’s and consequently causes him problems as he can’t remember his PIN, so has to carry around a lot of cash just in case.

Going to switch to a smart phone (the Doro) so he can use that contactless, as I assume that relies on the phone authentication to verify the card isn’t stolen.

There’s a facebook group for this – it came up on my recommendations list this morning.

No option to scroll to additional pages from the front forum page, using Firefox on Windows.

Doing 360s with a macebell is a good overall exercise for the core, back and shoulders. The closer you have your feet together, the more the weight of the mace is offset and the harder your core and back have to work to keep you in balance.

It’s an extremely time eficient form of exercise as well, especially considering all the muscle groups that are being activated.

If you are not wearing a helmet then that sugests to me that you’re fine with no-one stopping to help if you do have an accident and are injured – otherwise you’d be doing the most that you can to minimise any injuries in case you did need help.

Sort of like climbing up Everest without oxygen and expecting that someone will come and rescue you if it all goes wrong…

A tempting route is to buy 2nd and and just send the motor to one of those service centres to fit all the sealing they recommend.

Choose a bike with a standard Bosch powertube or easily available battery pack just in case you need to replace that – as battery packs for some, like Orbea, seem to be hard to get.

Mine cost about that – I choose a Thule rack so I could mount the Backspace XT box on, which gives quite a lot of useful extra room for family holidays.

That’s a really bad way to invest AIUI. Have a look at some James Shack videos on YouTube, he explains it pretty well.

It depends how you do it, and it can be called momentum investing – but you need to adhere to a rigid strategy to do it – FundExpert used to do it but he’s closed the subscription down as he is too busy with his private clients.

Funds that start to do well often tend to keep doing well for a period of time, but they set stop/loss triggers on the fund so if it dropped a certain amount it would be sold, and then a period waited before reviewing it or selecting a different fund.

It works but takes discipline to follow the strategy.

Buying and selling the S&P 500 based on whether it crosses the 10 month simple moving average price also has worked beter than just holding the S&P 500.

yes, mine seemed to work quite well for me when cutting an 18mm ply base platform for my Kickr Move/Climb

Kreg do a sled and track that can be added to a standard circular saw – I use it with a dewalt.

Big price reduction on loudspeakers at http://www.stirlingbroadcast.com 🤣

Perfect for relaxing to after a big ride 😂

(he’s closing the company due to memory issues and I’m helping sell off his stock – but no financial gain for me, so not spamming! )

Tenda network here as well – an advantage is that the house is cat5 wired so I can use an ethernet backbone for the Mesh routers – handy as the house is thick stone walls which kill the wifi signal.

Not all Mesh networsk let you have a hard-wired backbone.

My indoor cats are great – I let them in the garden supervised sometimes but one of them doesn’t really like the outside and will often want to go back in.

In my previous house I had angled in trellis at the top of the fences so they couldn’t get out, but they are incapable to scaling a fence anyway like a normal cat and escape was only a risk if there was something near they could jump from.

Neither are bright enough to be trusted to roam, so they stay indoors and sleep about 20 hours a day.

It’s tempting to just buy something second hand and immediately send the motor off to that ebike motor repair centre that has been featured on Youtube to get the motor rebuilt along with their improved sealing.

Also a model with a removable and replaceable battery.

I slept on an Exped megamat last night on a mates kitchen floor – it really is as comfy, or maybe more, than my expesive mattresses at home.

I bought two and straps to connect them for a glamping trip a couple of years ago, which worked really well. Even got a fitted egyptian cotton sheet made for them and took the normal baavet duvet and pillows for some glamping luxury :-)

On a YT video I saw recently on motor reliability and seals, etc, it was interesting that he pointed out that you should enclose/wrap your motor with a plastic bag or similar if transporting it on a rear bike rack as the pressures attained when driving will harm the motor, like pressure washing.

I use RWS skewers in mine rather than QR

It’d be really nice to see a ‘lightweight’ slightly more enduro bike on offer but maybe you lose the magic weight by up speccing everything to cope with 160 front and rear – it feels like these bikes have the quality of suspension, but not quite the travel.

I’d hazard a guess that putting a slightly longer fork of anything with dw-link, or maybe split pivot, as rear suspension would get a long way there as anytime you see a review of a dw-link bike there are always comments about the surprisingly effective and stable rear end.

That basically means a Pivot bike. Salsa use split pivot but don’t have a lightweight yet.

£475 this month, so for the year that is 5.25% of £50k.

May 475
Apr 325
Mar 150
Feb 550
Jan 275
Dec 0
Nov 250
Oct 150
Sept 125
Aug 50
July 200
June 75

= 2625 = 5.25%

Mine is in the garage halfway through a groupset upgrade