Ideally you really want tugs either side if it’s horizontal dropouts BTW. It’s not just the pedalling force that make the wheel want to move, it’s the brake. Especially if you’re using a QR rather than a nutted axle you can properly crank down on.

And if you have the nutted axle, remember to carry a means to undo it for punctures.

“light XC type riding with less technical sections” then you’ll be cleaning up in races because even the best XC SSer’s are on 32:16 to 32:18 typically.

To add to this, I won Bristol bikefest pairs on SS one year, that’s pretty much the definition of light XC, most of it is on a blue man made trail, and that was on 32:18 29er, my teammate on 32:16 26er.

It’s also 7km for me across town to/from the trails and whilst the mtb is slower than my commuter it’s not disastrous, and less than you’d think given traffic etc.

The gear ratio only really matters on the flat. Uphill it’s your legs and lungs providing the limit, downhill regardless of ratio at any decent speed you’re not pedalling much.

SS doesn’t hurt on the hills, that’s naive. SS hurts when you’re on a road linking section with your geared mates and they’re going juuust too fast so you’re having to hold max rpm for minutes at a time. Proper fire in the legs then.

As you get used to SS you’ll get used to spinning faster.

I use 39:18 for (hilly) 700×35 commuter work and 33:19 or 18 on the 29er. 32:18 is good too.

Point is, gear down and spin more. If you choose a comfy gear on road it’ll be annoying tall off road for obstacles and corners/mud etc.

If you’re experimenting, try 32:16 on 27.5 equivalent and see how that is, assuming you’ll spin your max cadence for a decent flat road pace.

Well, for me and my legs they’re one of the few places I can easily get long enough trousers that also fit my waist. I like they do longer body short sleeve stuff too, which is very rare.

Try https://spoke-london.com/

Dead easy to order a few bits and return what doesn’t suit or fit. Lots of size and girth options to get a spot on fit and I like all the bright colours they do, fit the first post well.

Good slightly stretchy trousers/jeans and they offer different waist and thigh sizes to fit whatever shape legs/arse/waist. Quality is good, think “John Lewis”.

They always have some codes on too, if they don’t I’ll find my referral code.

Has even set me thinking of doing a full sus ss frame

Do it! They’re ace. The extra traction at the back end on my Starling really helps when you’re gurning away up some ill advised tech climb.

Singlespeed is the business.

My fav bike, and best bike I’ve ever ridden, is my custom Starling Beady Big Eye

https://www.instagram.com/p/CRt8tSIBvDj/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

I use a cheap (£10) usb hdmi grabber and appropriate adapters to show phone screens on laptops when I need to present them (in person or teams).

Just use VLC/QuickTime/whatever to show the window.

Google slides – output to pdf or putting yourself at the mercy of hotel wifi…

Picard (you can get their stuff from Ocado, and elsewhere) do some high quality frozen stuff that easily cooks from frozen.

In particular, their paella is great. Just take the bag out the freezer, shake some into a pan, heat. Job done. If you want you can throw some other things in, but they’re pretty generous with the fish etc.

Oh I have 2FOs as well for off road, the shimano are better for what you want IMO (owning both).

I have some older shimano AM5 good for what you describe if skate style shoes count as “normal”.

Only downside is they’re oddly heavy, heaviest pair of shoes I own.

Good a commute tho as you can walk ok in them, some give in the sole and quite waterproof plus don’t stand out/look too disco.

Baleshare, west of Uist via the short causeway. I’ll be amazed if you see another person on it.

I’d have assumed Giant would be decent as a big brand, part of why you pay for a big name.

Or don’t in future, as with others in this thread. How off putting.

I second the suggestion above to ask someone from the mag to try get a comment out Giant…

+1 on signing. We did sing and sign.

By the time he went to nursery at 14mo (pandemic got in the way) he had 60+ signs. He could sign for milk/drink/food/more etc before he was 1 and well before he was speaking.

He still does it occasionally, when he says and signs thankyou you know he really means it :-)

Also I had some really enjoyable dad time with him when he was under 1 watching a sing and sign video for 20 mins together most days.

So mine (3.5) still won’t sleep through, we’ve accepted he’s just not a great sleeper. Doesn’t wake up for long though.

And it does get better – he loves building Lego sets now, and sat building Lego with my son is one of the best things ever. Or riding round the park with him on our bikes. Or exploring some woodland etc.

If you do the online chat thing they’re very helpful and less hassle than waiting on the phone.

I’ve had them update my earnings/tax code on that to fix a similar issue to what you describe too (I only worked some of 2021).

IIRC from my 5 tourer it’s 2 years or 20k miles for oil. Found a pic before the last oil change that still saying 13k miles on it (but I’d hit 2 years, pandemic mileage situation)

Experimented with gingerbread lids

I think it’s ok if he didn’t inhale ingest any?

Oh or blocked transfer port in the uppers for solo air. It’s just a notch in the upper air spring stanchion, can get clogged with grease.

Air in the lowers.

Bleed them if they have the valve (or loosen and knock the foot nut in and redo it) and they’ll be reet.

Root cause probably one of the seals/o-rings gone or dry.

If you want posh light tubes, try schwalbe aerothan.

Carry one as a spare on the mtb as it’s more compact and light, had to use it a few times and the wheel-feel is closer to tubeless than a normal tube. Spendy mind!

Ginger wine? If you like your sweet with a fiery finish.

Try with a splash of whisky and scoop of vanilla ice cream for a quality float.

room for a bigger water bottle would’ve been good

I’ve got a 30, admittedly in XL, but a full size bottle fits with a side load cage.

If you have any Barclays products check in the app – they’re offering a few free months to most apple services (even if you’ve had some free before)

Ask for a sleeve and if they don’t then just lob it in a bag and don’t worry too hard about it? That’s my approach. They gave me a sleeve when they gave me a nicer laptop :-)

Otherwise whatever neoprene sleeve fits well, loads about all much of a muchness. Help keep the laptop dry if it gets wet, such as the entirely hypothetical situation of your bottle of water bursting open and turning an aeroplane overhead locker into an unexpected water feature.

a career he thought was physically creating and programming things,

This is part of why I do it, the interaction with the real world, and it’s taken me some amazing places. Some glamorous like the atacama desert and, well, underground in north wales in November.

a lot of theoretical, maths and huge coding related to AI things.

A robot’s just a computer with wheels (or wings, props or legs). The maths is the important bit, the coding is necessary.

Of all the people I’ve interviewed/hired for robotics roles (about 1/mo for 5 years) I don’t think I recall speaking to one that built a robot as part of the degree (physically). Some did stuff on the side themselves, or as part of jobs. The closest is maybe a phd grad building a quadcopter but their “real work” was the control software.

I have worked in an org more focused on the building the physical robot – most of the roboticists were on the software side whereas the mechanical side was more tradition mech eng, aero eng, sim & modelling engineers, systems engineers etc.

If you/he wants an idea of the (academic) breadth of robotics, have a look at the outputs of the IROS and ICRA conferences, they’re they big ones.

If he or (or you) would like a chat with someone who’s been in robotics/ai a while, always happy to help people getting in to the area where I can.

it looks like the course will not run beyond this year’s intake.

This is VERY surprising, given they just opened the national Robotarium at HWU – have they changed the name of the course perhaps? I find it hard to believe they’d drop undergrad courses with a robotics slant.

And for an example: halfway through year three and no robots built….

On reputation HWU have a decent enough rep for robotics but mostly through the CDT (so PhD level) and ocean systems stuff.

But on the building robots point, I’m not sure this matters for 3rd years or would be expected, or possibly even advisable. You burn a lot of time with the hardware getting stuff working and probably not a great use of time when you need to learn basics. Certainly not a hinderance working in robotics/AI. You would expect robotics related content in years 4/5 though, or projects – but I’d generally recommend staying away from the hardware if possible and wanting to do well (see time comment, simulation or data based can be a better use of scarce time – unless he’s into the mech eng side?)

In terms of complaining – he should speak to someone who’s permanent staff, one of the profs rather than RA/PhD students teaching. They will care, and interested motivated students who want to engage beyond the norm even to say things aren’t good enough are rare. That said, whether or not they can do anything…

FWIW I’ve worked in academia, but mostly industry, in robotics and AI for 20 years now. Including post doc at HWU* (a decade+ ago), and a lot of hiring since. Doing well at a good degree helps but it’s the extra stuff and interesting project work that stands out.

Any specific questions I might be able to help with ask away.

*so I know people at HWU, maybe I’m biased? I don’t dispute what you say sounds bad though in terms of the exams etc. in terms of exams on stuff not taught – there’s shades of gray there, students can be expected to read around the area.

Yes though I’ve obviously missed something important if that wasn’t helpful :-)

Re-reading… I can’t see a pic so presumably that would help if it loaded. Ah and 2.5mm so just a hole for an inner?

Gear cable outers, cut the old one and pull the outer leaving the inner in place. Slide the new outer back in along the old inner, it’ll go through any hole perfectly. Then pull the old inner out and put the new one in.

If the old one is out already, thread some old gear inner thru first then the outer over it as above.

I’m nearly 90kg and had a 24 spoke wheel I disliked on an enduro bike cos it was so flexy. Thing is, that flex seemed to also make it strong and resistant to damage so I never killed it and had an excuse to replace it!

So it might be ok.

For airplay you can airplay to a Roku stick if you’re both on the same wifi.

Lightning to hdmi dongle works fine tho, or USBC with appropriate dongle from a modern iPad.

Just to counter the above, as an employee I’ve successfully negotiated an extension to my probation – even although at the company discretion they could claim I’d passed it.

In my case however the company had repeatedly messed up my pay and so I argued they’d failed to meet their end of the deal and I’d like to extend it till they got my pay right.

Daniel Craig in Knives Out.

Came here to say this, outstanding.

No specific course advice, but learning bash, then git, then python will stand you in good stead. Each will be made a bit easier knowing the previous and basic tool proficiency has a cumulative effect.

We’re on a bike forum so let’s say learn to use Allen keys well and every other job on the bike gets easier.

If you’re not familiar with Linux systems that’s worth doing, similarly cloud systems – but the above is all more important.

I’d suggest getting proficient with conda (well, miniforge) or virtualenv/venv will pay off in spades too.

08-18 ones with the 2+1 split the seats come out too.

I normally kept the double seat in the garage most of the time as rarely moving more than three people.

The overview page doesn’t refresh if you simply go back.

Does on an iPhone…

2 bikes inside might be an option too, front wheels off (as I’ll likely have a Geometron G1 XL by then).

You’d fit it wheels on in a 2008-18 one if you take the rear seats (at least 2) out.

In those ones you also want one WITHOUT the roof storage as it reduces the height for bars etc wheels on.

Key thing about pre 18 is the rear seat footwells which you lose on the post-18 new shape. The footwell lets you keep the front wheel on. Bikes go longways and you just turn the wheel at an angle. This pushes the end of the bar higher and if you’re tall (as you ride XL long bikes like me) the bars are high anyway. Hence needing no roof gubbins variant.

3 bikes 3 people wheels on, boom.

I was looking at replacing with a new shape one but the fold flat seats were a deal breaker as my big bikes wouldn’t fit wheels on. It might work in an XL wheelbase but they weren’t available when I was looking. Ended up in a 5 series tourer with a towbar rack.

Last time I needed something like this I picked one up from SJS cycles, they do seconds/marked ones a bit cheaper.