I’ve had 27.5 x 3.0 Nobby Nics in there, on WTB i35 rims. It’s a pain having to get to those front two racks but I noticed yesterday a new type of rack on one of the vans being used, probably to accommodate longer bikes and fatter tyres.

watch out for the tall thin driver with long black hair, he retightened all the straps so much it rotated my carbon bars in the stem!

And one guy always has Jeremy Vine on the radio, so be careful that you don’t crash after the uplift because of increased stress levels after listening to him.

The thing that gets me is the number of times the met office forecast will be right the day before, and often agree with the bbc forecast, and then on the day their forecast changes to something that turns out wrong, whereas the bbc forecast remains the same as yesterday and turns out to be correct. You would think that the forecast would get more accurate as the time horizon approaches.

And the Met Office spent a ton of money on a new Cray not that long ago, seemingly so they can also run everybody else’s models for comparison, as you see on their deep dives on YT.

It looks like Googles AI forecasting is looking promising and has outperformed conventional forecasting recently, maybe they should concentrate on providing lots of data points for it and see how it goes.

I remember Dark Skies being uncannily accurate for the weather in Horley, Surrey on the day I got married – like saying ‘rain in 14 minutes, stopping 11 minutes later’, so we got the jazz band inside and sure enough rain arrived in 14 minutes, and stopped 11 minutes later. Seemed to be able to do that precision a lot then. Wasn’t so good in recent years for some reason.

I’ve got one of these and it was very good but they don’t seem to be around anymore:

The side support plus the ‘snuggling’ feeling around your body seems to help with dropping off, used it on some 10 hour flights and got some decent sleep – and I am a light sleeper and don’t normally drop off easily.

Only issue was that, being rubber, it can be a little warm.

It had mixed reviews on Amazon, but can aybe get some ideas from the reviews ?

Needs fine tuning with the number of breathes to inflate as you don’t inflate it fully.

You could maybe replicate the idea with a decent neck pillow and a small inflatable thermarest behind your back, then it you don’t like the back rest you can remove or sit on it.

Dark Skies used to be very accurate some years ago but then it wasn’t so much, then Apple bought them.

Here in the Rhondda the Met Office forecasts are pathetic – they are often forecasting the correct weather the day before and the on the day they actually change it to something which is wrong.

The BBC is generally more often correct, and Google weather seems pretty decent.

I normally look at Apple, Google, BBC and the Met Office and see if there is a consensus.

In the dry it is definitely gravel material – I did it on my electric unicycle as part of a London to Brighton run

More distance less weight will get you fitter.

it will **** my girlfriends dog right up though, 10 miles in the hills is just about ok but much more than that and he looks a bit worse for wear the next day and I feel a bit guilty. He’s only a Maltese, although he’s up for the longer walks and pulls hard on his lead right ‘til the end.

As I said I am trying to maximise the benefit I am getting from the dog walks, and it seems to be beneficial. My knees and ankles seem to be more stable already on the rocky descents, leg strength is also getting better.

Just hiking is a pretty slow way of getting fit, and not particularly effective imho. This way I was panting pretty hard on the climbs today as I had added more weight, and the inside of my jacket and fleece were fair soaked with sweat when I got home. Not feeling any pain in my knees either, so I’ll keep doing it for now as it seems to be good payback for the effort.

gives a great sound too

Great sound from DAB, how did you manage that?

Ok. So the 8kg is in addition to anything else you’re carrying? I’m trying to work out how heavy my bag’s starting weight would be, with water, food, maybe a flask of tea, binocs, maybe a bird book, waterproof, fleece, and all the other bits and bobs I carry. At least it’s lighter at the end of the walk. 😀

yes, although I wasn’t carrying a lot extra as limited space in that cycling rucksack once all the various weights were in there.

I’ve now got a better rucksack with weight pockets and some cast iron weight plates or around an inch thickness, so will haver a lot more room in the bag for stuff.

It’s based on army training, and in the field, where they are carrying big weights. SO they train with them as well.

notice the comments that talk about lack of injuries

Macebell is great for upper body and core strength in a very time efficient way.

Rucking is very good for building leg strength and stamina.

Started rucking 3 hikes ago and that seems to be kickstarting my leg fitness quite well, faster than just hiking was.

@gravedigger – what does that mean?

It is basically hiking/walking with weights in your rucksack – I often walk my girlfriends Maltese whilst she is away working live-in care and, although he is keen, hikes around the hills of > 10 miles seem to knacker him out a lot the next day, so I was wanting to retrict the hike length, hence the weights.

I’ve done 3 now with 8Kg in a 10 litre Evoc cycling rucksack, cobbled together from dumbell and ankle weights, but have gone for a better rucksack targetted at rucking (has internal weight pockets, better shoulder and hip belts and is a more robust 1000D cordura) with some weight plates for better weight distribution.

From here as this seems to be the best available for a reasonable price:

YOMP Y-CO 1 Backpack – Shadow Black

Got a nice local loop of around 9 miles and 2300ft of ascent in 3 steep climbs (offroad ascent really seems to get the breathing going).

Notably if you record the activity with an Apple watch then you need to record it as “Functional Strength Training” otherwise it thinks you are getting realy unfit with a low VO2 max because you are going slower than normal with a much higher heart rate !

Not seen a Dryrobe with an Oodie underneath yet, that would be the ultimate…

No, but we can help by replacing the car we were going to buy anyway with a car that has much lower emissions.

Depends on your mileage and how long youo will be driving it for, as EVs have a higher emission cost to start with it will take a while to pass the tipping point of emissions.

An EV is also a heavy beast, if you switch to a lighter, smaller engined petrol car that tipping point will be even further away.

60 in 6 days time, trying to retire early in the Rhondda Valley, was pretty fit and let it go in recent years, currently losing weight on my way to 11.5 stone.

Started rucking 3 hikes ago and that seems to be kickstarting my leg fitness quite well, faster than just hiking was.

Macebell has meant my back is in better shape than it’s ever been.

Just got to complete the upgrade to the gravel bike and I’ll be off and running (or cycling…).

Wait until Freely replaces Freesat and Freeview and then cash-strapped pensioners find out that they have to fork out for a broadband contract in order to get TV.

I was going the get he Worx one but they don’t seem to supply spare chains

Last thing I we wanted to watch was Succession. Available on Prime Video for £17.99 for Season 1. We bought the Season 1 DVD box set for £9.99 instead.

unless it’s a bluray DVD then that’s a drop in resolution, so not the same product…

Fascists then :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Union_of_Fascists

Anyway the point was about how easily it is to influence a group into thinking that way, as in The Third Wave experiment.

Just look at al the recent events, like Trump and his extreme supporters, all the group think shown on social media, etc

People mentioned being pushed for time, and one of the best exercises for upperbody and core I’ve found, which is extremely time efficient, is the macebell.

I just do 360s with it, but it is surprising how much your core is involved, especially as you bring your feet together.

And I spend a fair bit of time walking the dog, so I’ve just tried rucking – starting with 8Kg in my rucksack. It certainly upped my work rate going up hill (did 15 mile and 2800 ft ascent) and I enjoyed it so much I’ve just bought a proper ruckiing rucksack and some weight plates to do it more often to make the most use of my dog walking time.

Fundamentally I think I am someone that needs to run (although I don’t enjoy it) and am waiting until I drop another stone before I start again to keep the stress off my 60 year old knees. There is something different about running vs cycling, and particularly for helping beat off depression (although it hasn’t worked for the guy across the road).

These days I try to follow this simple Q:
Do you value quality things being made in Britain still? Or happy to see the ever expanding trade deficit expand further ?

My pecking order when I reasonably can for things is
– Britain
– another European (EU) Country
– non-EU European Country (eg Switzerland)
– Oz or Canada
– American (US)
– other Asian
– China

And absolutely not if I’m aware of thr source – Russia.

same, except with cars and then it’s based on the specialisation of the independant garage I use.

If the hubs are so closely equal then why not buy Hope – or else there might be a thread on here later similar to the Orange thread…

plus the support from Hope always seems to be excellent

This country had a Nazi movement and in the US The Third Wave experiment showed how easy it was to create the right atmosphere for most people to become Nazis – it wasn’t just a German thing at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave_(experiment)

I do 360s with a macebell and it is extremely good at shoulder/upper body and core strength all in one time efficient exercise:

and

yesterday was the first time I tried rucking, where you put extra weight in your rucksack and go hiking, preferably up something steep.

enjoyed it so much I’ve bought a rucking specific rucksack from here, which looks outstanding value compared to the other strong packs out there :

YOMP Y-CO 1 Backpack – Shadow Black

They also sell the weight plates, and also shoulder moonted sandbags which might also be good for endurance training :

YOMP Basic Training Sandbag

sedentary office worker

programmers can burn 1.5 calories a minute when concentrating hard, and often work long days…

et your eyes up off the phone and read the ******* road! There’s hundreds of signs you need to pay attention to, and if you’re not spotting the speed limit ones, and the ones with the names of places/roads you’re heading for then what else are you missing?

So is that advocating old school navigation where you need to effectively draw up a route map of all the towns and roads you need to follow, because your destination town won’t be signposted until late in the journey. Then you have a scrap of paper to keep glancing at to see what to do at the next junction, and if you take a wrong turn you need to stop and either turn around if you can or pull over, get the paper map out, work out the new route and update your scrap of paper.

Using a modern satnav on your phone is much safer if used correctly – placed in the corner of the screen it is viewable without interrupting your view of the road (integrated in the central console is a different matter) and gives audible instructions anyway so you don’t even need to look at it, you have an ETA which keeps reminding you that speeding to get there faster is pretty pointless as it makes no difference, if you miss your turn for some reason or the road is congested the satnav will reroute you and so there is less stress about making a mistake and you can pay more attention to the road, etc.

Obviously you need to be aware of it trying to route you through unsuitable roads and the inaccuracy of its speed indications, but now you have the option of refusing to go down a road because you don’t like the look of it, knowing that the satnav will suggest something different, all leading to less stress and more concentration on the road.

You can also pick up a box of 144 cadburys flakes for £6.99 from FarmFoods apparently. Probably a bummer if you’ve already been…

https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/25702236/cadbury-flake-box-farmfoods-bargain/

Can’t trust the satnavs yet, last time I looked CoPilot was completely wrong and Google maps is wrong a lot of the time.

there’s a few places, such as in the Afan valley, where the roads were 40 in areas that should have been 30, and they have remained at 40, which now feels quite wrong.

I had the nilfisk 140 but it was temperamental with tripping the electrics and then just temperamental and then dead, so I dumped it and all the accessories I had for it as it had hacked me off so much.

Bought a titan from screwfix to clean up the mess made by the guys silicon rendering the house and it’s breezed through that and other stuff since.

Folks need on average about 2000-2500Kcals a day to maintain weight,

Net calories, but I think there is more to it than that.

I can do a local hike around the hills which the apps say burns 2400 calories but it’s weight loss effect seems to be on a par with a short zone 2 ride on the trainer which the apps say might be 300 or 400 calories. I might have had a packet of low-salt crisps on the walk, so knock it down to 2000 calories, but even so it doesn’t compute on simple calorie terms.

So I just weigh myself every day and notice what appears to work. Baked potatoes are always good, Ritter marzipan bars are always about 1lb in weight gain, regular short zone 2 on the turbo is good and easy and effective, running is good but requires more recovery at my age, walking not very good, etc.

Perhaps you might like to check out what sort of audio systems were available 50 years ago.

Can only stretch to about 40ish, first hifi demo was 38 years ago, bought Quad, Rogers, Manticore, Nakamichi, Hitachi (tuner), rejected Audiolab and Musical Fidelity.

Interestingly that GCN video debunks the link between exercise and weight loss.

If you actually listen to what he say then it doesn’t, he just briefly covers some ideas from the research. Like the suggestion that after you exercise you change your behaviour.

But what if you exercise at the end of the day, before bed for example?

I find just a little exercise (30 mins) on the turbo at the end of the day in zone 2 is enough to drop between 1/2 and 1 lb overnight, with no change to what I eat earlier in the day, And running burns even more.

I am coming down from 13 stone 10 lbs to currently 12 (gained from comfort eating and no real exercise whilst DIYing on my new house) in a fairly leisurely manner, previously went from about 13 to near 11 to win a weight competition at work (and that included drinking a Venti caramel latte every morning before work), and when I was younger 13 stone 3 down to 11 stone, so based on my experience I would catagorise that research as flawed…

.

There seems to be a category for this – Sigma males :

Do a search on Ebay for “bi-wire jumpers” and there are lots of options if you want to spend money!

I tried the bell-wire speaker cable years ago when I got my first proper hifi but 79 strand type stuff was clearly better, but that 2.5mm Van Damme stuff is good enough and the run short enough to just buy some and close this thread. Make some jumpers from this cable, or just strip it back further and connect across the two terminals.

counting backwards

£550 this month, £275 last month, nothing December, £250 November, £150 October, £125 September, £50 August, £200 July, £75 June, £150 May, £75 April, £50 March – from a full pot.

that’s £1950, which is 3.9% for the year.

Advantage is no tax due, so if all your allowances were used up elsewhere that’s an effective rate of 4.875% I think, or more depending on your tax bracket.

Disadvantage is that it’s not compounding as the account is maxed, so you have to put it somewhere else at a similar rate to effectively get compounding.

Logitech ms2s linked to above is good, the MX vertical I had was quite dissappointing and nowhere near as good as other vertical mice I used from Autley which was very comfortable – the MX was a poor angle and shape and the side of your hand would rest on the desk and cause soreness.

I’m with M&S – bikes are covered in garage and also locked to anything immovable, but as the garage is rather shonky I’ve put Pragmasis wall anchors on one immovable wall and Pragmasis chains through all the bikes that are hanging from Steadyracks, so if by chance an insurance adjustor comes round and says that garage is really just an outbuilding, I’m still locked to something immovable to avoid a downgrade in coverage.

Watched 14 Peak: Nothing is Impossible again last night with a mate who hadn’t seen it – what a fantastic documentary of a stunning feat of achievement from an amazing guy, and team. Really something special.

That Spendor guy did tell me once what the technical difference was that occurred with biwiring.

I’ve forgotten what he said it was, but he also said that it was extremely unlikely that the speaker designer had ‘voiced’ the speaker with it biwired, so if biwiring makes a sonic difference (I heard it on some Roger’s LS7ts once), then it is likely to be the less correct solution sonically anyway.

It seems to be a common misunderstanding, perhaps based on the spec (wasn’t the frequency response required something like 400-20kHz?).

yes, here’s a link to the design paper :

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/reports/1976-29.pdf

It says that they found that the response was actually fairly uniform down to 100Hz.

Although tempted I think I am going to plump for an Apple Watch 9, if you disable all the superfluous stuff not needed for health monitoring then you can stretch the battery life out quite a bit, and after studying videos from the quatified scientist the multiband GPS in the Epix doesn’t seem to be an awful lot better, or any better, than the one in the apple watch.

And the 41mm is a lot smaller for accomodating mtb gloves, etc.

Yep, that’s the standard response I was expecting.

Do you perform double blind testing when you buy a new cartridge for your record deck, for example. Or any new component, like a DAC. How can you trust your ears that it does actually sound better, seeing that you spent more money on it and so have subconscious bias? Do you have a sound meter to ensure that comparisons are done at the same volume? When you go to a shop for a HiFi demo do you wear a blindfold and ban the sales person from speaking, lest his vocal inclinations hint at which component he has swapped in?

As I say the changes weren’t subtle and I had no expectation bias other than expecting there to be no difference – which is the opposite of normal ‘expectation bias’.

I spent time trying to prove that I was experiencing a bias and that there was no actual difference, and was dismayed at the prospect that my sensible and well engineered Quad amps where actually not as good as I hoped they might be.

My first job was at BBC Research Department, where I bought my first LS3/5as with my staff discount, so I had been exposed to ‘planted’ engineers that also didn’t believe in cables and speaker stands, and I had read many of the BBC papers on loudspeaker design that were in the library there. So that’s the viewpoint I was coming from.

The Quad 707 problem was similar to a bad case of wiring speakers out of phase – as I was using external crossovers there were multiple places I could make mistakes so obviously I took care. Are you telling me that hearing speakers out of phase is not something that is immediately apparent?

All of the changes I described weren’t subtle. In contrast if I change my 2.5mm stranded cable for the Nordost flatline cable the sound seems sharper to me – this is a subtle change and not something I would swear to without a double blind test. That could easily be expectation bias.