I’ve just bought another pair of 3/4 bibs in their sale. Love their kit – well made, tough and super comfortable. We’ve also had them make us some club kit which was really nice – jerseys and gilets (race and relaxed cuts and also kids sizes too). Bibs more comfortable than Rapha for me (not as comfortable as Assos S7 pad though, but more comfortable than S9). These things are subjective tho! I also like Albion bibs fwiw.

I can’t think she’d be downloading huge amounts of stuff and we have a family onedrive subscription to cloud save really big files so I am sort of leaning to Air 5 with 64GB – on the same thoughts as bighairydel re processing power…

I had a Lynskey R270 until I was knocked off it and it got damaged. It was a great bike but max 28c wheels and no UK distributor now. I did alot of searching and wanted a UK frame if possible. That led me to Enigma and I had a custom Echelon made. I love it. Enigma were great to deal with and put up with my (largely unnecessary) minor tweaks! It’ll go up to 35c and is supremely comfortable despite remaining quite racey in feel. We went for a slightly shorter top tube so that I can keep the stem length sensible as I get older and less flexi..

https://www.instagram.com/p/Che3SCFjME5/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

We have one of these and are very happy with it:

Sky-Watcher Heritage 150P FlexTube Dobsonian Telescope

So in 2007, someone linked to a Word version here:

http://www.militarian.com/threads/the-history-of-the-royal-scots-fusiliers-1919-59.673/

Link takes you to a dead end here: http://www.rhf.org.uk/Books/KEMP’S%20History%20of%20the%20RSF%201919%201959.doc

I’d contact them and ask. Regimental museums tend to be very helpful!

It is in terms of expectation of service delivery to tax receipts to support the spending.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpayments

There is an issue of failure with the current model though. We are chronically short of everything in the NHS. Some of this is medical progress with treatments/drugs etc which cost lots, some is the growing population, there is expectation and not seeing a wait for a non-urgent issue as acceptable (and TBH some of the waits really are ridiculous because of staff/capacity shortages – and pain is an awful thing to live with) and some is a result of people not treating the NHS with the respect it deserves. I had 3 DNAs on a scanning list of 12 this week and thats not unusual. Problem is you cannot overbook in the anticipation a DNA as when people then all do turn up, they can’t all be seen.

Fixing staffing numbers is a real challenge – training all forms of carers takes time so there is a lag from investment to result and that also requires a boost in spending which means more taxes. The country is broke, inflation is high and people not only don’t want to pay more tax, but most can’t.

I accept Bevan’s adage “We shall never have all we need. Expectations will always exceed capacity. The service must always be changing, growing and improving – it must always appear inadequate.”

With that in mind I think we ought to look at all models to improve deliver, access and costs.

My 2p. Competing interests – none. I’m a doc but do no private practice because I don’t really believe in it.

It’s intended for crit type racing and coaching/development. Lots of people my way (just outside Brum) are looking forward to it opening ; especially the juniors. Bit like the Stourport track – https://www.stourportsportsclub.com/cycle-track/

I thought I’d put this on this thread but it must have been on another one so (and please forgive me if I am repeating myself).

We have gone for renewables in a big way. No mains gas and when we bought our house 10 years ago it was a coal filled multifuel stove with a backburner for heating and hot water. The house also had a solar thermal system that had been installed in 1994.

Things we have done:

1. Biomass boiler – great bit of kit but pellets are annoyingly hard at the moment and does need love in terms of servicing and clean out. Converted house from vented to unvented tank too.

2. Updated the solar thermal – new microcontrollers and regular fluid replacement. Ours are evacuated tubes with metal vanes sealed in them, but are not made anymore. 30 tubes on the roof and work brilliantly.

3. 2kw PV on the boiler shed roof 8 years ago with associated FIT tariff. Over the 8 years they have reliably produced 1500 units/year or so. No optimisers on them as they weren’t a thing back then. Shed roof is dead south facing at 20 degrees. we installed a Solar iBoost with this to top up the hot water when we are producing excess electricity.

4. This summer the south roof of our house needed re-tiling so we put 5.4kw of flush fitted PV panels on it instead of tiles. Its south facing at about 40 degrees. We also added a 15KW Huawei battery. This has been ‘live’ for the last 2 weeks and our electricity use has plummeted to an average of <2 units from the grid/day. This is when we try to draw more amps than the battery can supply (eg induction hob on, oven on and tumble dryer running).

5. We have also fitted a Zappi in advance of an EV arriving when its built and shipped.

Company used over the last 8/9 years are Energy Zone in Cleobury Mortimer so good for whoever it was who needed a Worcestershire installer! They are good but always busy.

Things I would say from our experience:

1. The biomass now that pellets are becoming harder to source. I think I would go air source (though this was less good 8 years ago).

2. Servicing renewable tech is harder to achieve than standard heating as there are fewer trained people to use.

3. Installers and companies do frequently go bust. Loads of biomass firms have disappeared.

4. Make sure the heat calcs are done well to avoid disappointment!

5. Consider ‘air to air’ air source – can be reversed in the summer to give cooling.

6. Solar hot water is very good in our experience.

7. Love the battery so far.

Hope this helps.

So we are just literally switching on now…

Have had 2kw of panels on a South facing shed roof for 8 years but we had to redo the roof on the south facing part of our house so have had flush/inset panels put on as much of it as possible which adds another 5.4kw of generation (these have optimisers on them). The roof is dead south facing and unshaded s should be ideal.

We have a 15kw battery on the system too now, literally just wired in (!), a solar iboost (had for 8 years, a great bit of kit) for hot water and a Zappi car charger.

I think we ought to hugely reduce bills. Fingers are crossed!

Other eco things we have – solar thermal hot water and a biomass boiler (no mains has where we are!)

Whole job is 20k but the batteries cost as much as the panels and inverter. Cost includes labour as well as moving the existing solar thermal system and servicing it at the same time. Hard to know if that’s good or bad value TBH but I’ve used the company a lot over the years and trust them

We are just about the have more PV fitted in the next 2 weeks. Already have 2kw on our biomass boiler house; house has a large south facing roof which needs retiling (previous owners did the north roof before they sold the house). We are putting 14 390W panels in inset trays with their own inverter. These and the 2kw we already have will will link to a 15Kw Huawei battery system. We already have a solar iBoost which ensures excess generation heats how water before feeding back to grid and we also have solar thermal.
The existing 2kw we have has been pretty reliably delivering 1500 kwh / year for the last 5 or so and we use just under 5000 kwh/yr for the house. We are getting an EV in the new year (delivery times allowing) and are also installing a zappi. My hope is that with all this our utility costs will plummet and we should be able to run the car (an Ioniq 5) for little cost in charging…..

fingers are crossed…

Can I suggest looking here? They sell refurbished clippers but mine were completely as new with no evidence of use. Buying through the refurbished bit means you get access to the professional grade kit which lasts way longer. Would suggest the Cordless Legend or the Cordless Magic Clip..

https://www.wahl.co.uk/product-category/refurbished-products/

I missed Imlachs comment about Pog and raising his arm – what did he say?

I’m another who can’t believe he’s un-enhanced. Lots of comments about supernatural and spaceman coming from areas of the peloton…..

Both my daughters have them – a reward for great school reports. It wasn’t what I’d had in mind when I had said well done but there we are. I was cynical but am not at all now. The flavour things do work and seem to last longer than advertised. Neither of ours have leaked and they are sturdy. They encourage the girls to drink more water which is all to the good as far as I am concerned and they are easy to clean. Beats those Chilly bottle style things which are a PITA to clean and the endless number of cheaper (accepting almost any drinking vessel is cheaper than and AirUp) bottles which all invariably leaked.

I’m thoroughly enjoying it too – as are my kids and in laws. Agree with ton.

This btw is probably the best thing I’ve read on this forum in a long long while:

Am disappointed they went with ‘Circle of life’ from the Lion King.

‘Just can’t wait to be king’ would’ve been hilarious…

Thanks all – johnny, didn’t know that about Honor. Gonna go look at what costs what now.

We have no mains gas nor sewerage. House was heated with a multifuel stove with a back boiler but it was annoying – no heat when away for a weekend so home to stone cold house and hard to fine tune. We replaced it with a biomass boiler 5 or so years ago and haven’t looked back. It’s great and controllable from an app on the phone. We also have solar thermal and pv.

Theres a good energy cost comparison here :

Energy Cost Comparison

The bikestow peeps are lovely – good friends. Julie knows pretty much every workable van combo. If you give them a call she’d be able to guide you as to what may work. They are a small family business and completely honest.

With massive thanks to trailrat for the idea I spent this afternoon drilling the steel monorail I bought from rollingcenter and then installed it in the bike shed. The roller trolleys worked easily with B&Q hooks as trailrat suggested and I then bought 2 larger hooks from toolstation for MTB wheels which wouldn’t fit on the smaller red hooks. These required grinding the thread down and tapping an M10 thread (red hooks worked fine with m8 nuts and no grinding or tapping).

End result :

https://www.instagram.com/p/CRMZkFZrYIH/?utm_medium=copy_link

Hiya. I’ve had 2 bikes resprayed by Richard @bignosecustoms. He is a super nice guy and I’m happy to spread the word about him.

1: Road bike. Cervelo S3 which ended up looking like this:

OK so the insta image embed continues to fail. Go here: road bike

2: Track bike. Started as a standard 2010 Felt TK2 paint job and ended up as this:

another failed insta link – try this: track bike

He has also done 2 friends bikes: here and here

Its really hard to photograph the camo pattern on my Cervelo and the flip paint on the 2 track bikes (they are both the same colour, one gloss and one matte). If you have a look on the bignosecustoms insta images you can see them in some more detail I think.

sharkbait – there is. hen we bought the house it was heated with a multifuel stove and backboiler. Stone floors meant underfloor would have been prohibitive so we went biomass but did what we could to be as green as possible.

Heating – Hapero 15kw boiler. It does not have an external buffer, just a small internal one. Installer and I had a long chat when it was installed 6 years ago about buffer and short cycling. He was adamant (and turns out right) that a buffer wasn’t needed and agreed he’d install one at his cost if the machine over cycled. It does not appear to have done so.

Hot water – biomass boiler as above with an unvented tank that also has inputs for the solar thermal on the roof and an immersion which has the iBoost off the PV on the shed roof.

After a couple of years we switched the weather compensation off – after spending time trying to adjust the heat curve to get the house properly warm we decided that going a bit more old school may work and it has. Took a month of tweaking the combustion temperature target and air flow to get to a position of the boiler getting the house toasty and holding it well.

The thermostat has been a Salus IT500 which is a bit unglamorous in terms of web interface etc but it has worked just fine. Woke up this am however and noticed house a little cool, looked in boiler closed and the receiver unit for the Salus appears dead. The fuse is OK as is the mainboard. I do not have the confidence to go further than that though but our heating engineer is a nice guy and says he can be here tomorrow afternoon all being well. Assuming its not a mouse eating a wire or some other random and the receiver is dead I was wondering if I should stick with the Salus or if there had been better solutions in the last 6 years.

Perfect. Thank you. Off to Google

Thanks bear –

Hapero 15kw boiler. No buffer (has a small one built in). I’ve turned weather compensation off as it makes the house heat better. I know that’s not eco but… So the boiler is basically ‘be on or be off’ from the thermostat

Solar thermal goes into hot water tank only.

HW tank inputs – biomass, solar thermal which has its own Resol controller and pum and electric immersion.

Salus It500 controls heating and hot water.

Heating is a single circuit.

Rob, in my experience the charge entirely depends on what you do with it. I run it with a 3G connection for rerouting rides (you can put a 3g card in the Karoo and it uses little data so I have an essentially free one from 3 in it), I have the Bluetooth running connected to my power meter and was running the screen on navigation at reasonable brightness. You can put it into battery save mode when it turns the screen off and only switches the screen back on when it’s about to navigate you somewhere or when you turn it on whichnwould give you more time I suspect.

I’ve found the Hammerhead support good and the fortnightly firmware upgrades combined with an android operating system mean the machine feels light years ahead of Garmins or Mios.

You can sideload android apps onto it but I’ve not bothered.

I’ve had a Karoo since the initial kickstarter a few years ago, so the v1. I believe the v2 runs a bit slower but does have the beep and a smaller footprint. I don’t give a hoot about the beep so have never felt it as an issue.

Navigation is superb. Clear and easy to follow with rapid rerouting. Note – never used offroad though.

Screen quality is immense. It works fine with gloves for me in terms of the touchscreen aspect.

Battery is good too. 100 mile rides just fine. Hammerhead push out firmware updates every 2 weeks or so and I must confess the latest 2 have left my unit confused about battery – it tells me its low when it’s not and offers to go into energy saving mode. I just recalibrate the battery which is easy.

I’ve been accused of having an iPad attached to my bike but I like the big screen,and really like the clarity and interface.

Listen to Big Yim. He knows what he is talking about.

This is what he did to my bike.

More pics

…. Lots to read here. I knew you lot would have the answer! Jenkins’ book arrived yesterday. It’s pretty chunky…

Thank you Vader. Sounds like exactly what I am after..

Edit – ordered the book!

Podcast downloaded and I’ll have a look at You Tube too. Thanks.

If anyone has book suggestions please I’d be grateful.

I’ve used an easy2grow kit from autopot the last 10 years or so. I have about 5 of them now. Basically a 47 litre tank starched to trays the pots sit in with flood valves. Brilliant and good enough for the Eden project!

MOD medics in all trades work hand in glove with the NHS. We do not work part time in NHS hospitals when not ‘training’. We are health professionals who work day to day within the NHS. We do disappear for the odd week to keep military specific skills up to date however.

Our Combat Medical Technicians are the exception to this rule as there in no civilian equivalent for their role. They are trained combat paramedics and work day to day withing defence medial units. Many are working within the NHS as present to bolster a highly stretched service.

Some non medical troops have also been called up to help in the NHS where they have been rapidly trained to act as health care assistants and porters etc within hospitals to aid services where they can.

Hope that clears things up.

Edited as I misread an earlier comment and got inappropriately annoyed. Apologies.

1. A pen? Could go montblanc or even a wood turner using wood from your garden?

2.a forging course. See for example joel blacksmith knives – in a weekend he can make his own kitchen knife. The one I made with Joel was one of the best things I have ever done and the joy from using something I made is great every time I cook.

I’d suggest listening to this podcast for an insight into blockchain. It’s enlightening.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/tim.blog/2017/06/04/nick-szabo/amp/

For what my opinion is worth if you’re tempted by bitcoin you could hedge slightly by investing in something like Argo Blockchain in an ISA.

Thank you all – the girls are pretty set on gerbils now so the next step is to get an aquarium/gerbilarium together and get some critters!!

bobgarrod – I’d take any tips with thanks!!

mrs I is against guineas.

Looks like gerbils v rats… will put it to the family council….!!

mrhoppy – any issues re gerbil tails and kids grabbing them?

Wow – fast replies!

Space isn’t an issue re gerbils and I was thinking a modified aquarium.

Rat issue is the smell – they are apparently rather fragrant???

Cougar – it is. She was playing with it and got distracted by dinner which is when I got to photograph it! I’m not gonna adjust it though as she would kill me!!

My 10 year old daughter finished the lunar lander today – took her a day and a half of intermittent building. She, and the lander, is awesome!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CJoqHLXBH4D

We put a Falcon 1092 Continental in our kitchen. Ours is induction as there is. I mains gas where we are and it’s been great. Yes there are some scratches on the glass but that’s no real issue to be honest. I liked the 1092 as it has 2 full size ovens. It’s been brilliant.