Doing something useful with it, that requires education independent of the device.

At my daughters school that is incorporated into the lessons. The school doesn’t just teach them how to drive the device and they don’t have ‘using an iPad’ lesson, but they are taught how to use the device in an efficient and productive way as a tool within the lesson. Rather than being spoon fed information they are guided how to find out things themselves, I can’t see any negatives. They don’t spend all day playing minecraft.

Veruca Salts dad would have bought her one.

a child with its own telly is less lightly to get up early for school, will have less concentration at school and is less likely to walk to school.

The telly in her room is in a seperate play area with a couch (it was 2 rooms knocked into one) so she can’t watch it in bed.

She gets up fine every morning. She concentrates very well because she has a teacher who engages with her and a small class size. I doubt she’ll be walking any time soon, school is 30 miles away.

Wtf?!

I know, teaching kids how to use everday technology whatever next? They don’t even use chalk boards or ink pens anymore.
All their homework is app based, all of their books are available electronically, artwork they do is scanned and pictures taken during lessons are uploaded so we can see it, their diary is automatically updated and all of that fits onto something the size of a notepad, amazing isn’t it. You’re not still chopping trees down are you?

The HD Connectivity products are a minimum of what we would spec

Sorry I should have made it clear in my post. I wasn’t recomending those specific components (I’ve never used them so no idea if they are good or bad), just using them as the first Google hit examples.

One thing is for sure, if you want to switch HDMI and reliably send it any distance it gets expensive very quickly.

In that area I’ve been to Doel (which may be closer to Antwerp than you might want to go) which is an abandoned ghost town although if you head that way you could go to Westmalle and visit the trappist monestery (and brewery).

We have driven around the fingers around Rotterdam, to Middleburg and over the causeway to Burgh Haamstede, it’s pretty uninspiring to be honest a mix of open farmland and industrial areas and it’s fairly exposed so likely to be really windy for 99% of the year! Kinderdyke is a bit further up on the edge of Rotterdam which is good for windmills. Rotterdam itself is the Dutch version of Hull.

My daughter (who’s 7) has an iPad mainly because they have to use them at school, an iPod that she sometimes listens to on the bus (with volume limited headphones :wink:) and she has a cheap phone that she keeps in her school bag in case she misses the bus, school would ring us anyway but it makes her feel better.

I guess compared to when I was her age she has lots of other things that I didn’t, TV in her room, loads of toys, a fairly expensive bike etc.

But all that being said I don’t think she is particularly spoilt, she knows that no means no and it is very rare that she gets a treat without earning it through chores or as a reward. When we go on holiday or out on a trip she has a certain amount of pocket money and she can use that to buy whatever she wants, once it’s gone it’s gone.

She would barge her way to the front for a balloon at parties though, she learned pretty quickly that Dutch kids don’t queue!

It’s a while since I looked into so this may not be up to date but a couple of years ago there was two ways of doing what you want;

First an all singing all dancing 4×2 switch with HDBaseT outputs which will give you the option to connect 4 HDMI sources to 2 TV’s. Something like this;
http://www.hdconnectivity.com/hdmi-matrix/hybrid-4×2-hdbaset-matrix.html

Or a HDMI switch which will have inputs for 4 or 5 HDMI sources and a single HDMI output, which you then feed into some balluns like the ones you linked to.
http://www.hdconnectivity.com/5×1-hdmi-switch/hdmi-switch.html
http://www.hdconnectivity.com/extenders/hdmi-over-cat5-cat6-with-ir-extender.html

Controlling the whole thing can get clumsy though, juggling remote controls and other people in different rooms switching the wrong input/output.

Freshly planed wood
Paraffin
Disaronno (only the smell, not the taste)
Basil (the herb not Faulty)
Prada amber (on my wife)
Vosene
The exact mix of GT85 and Deep Heat you only get on the start line at races

We have an Orbea MX20 for our girl (7yrs) there is a 24″ wheeled version as well and verious levels of kit. I think they compare fairly well on build, spec, price and weight.

We were originally going to get the Islabikes equivalent but it was too much hastle with their bizarre policy of not shipping to Europe.

I would guess that most first years have moments when they think they’ve made a huge mistake when choosing their university and at other times they think they’ve chosen the best place in the world.

Hold on to the good times and when you’re at your lowest, thank your lucky stars that you’re not in Port Talbot.

No thanks. I would rather the cause of an accident be investigated correctly and the guilty party then prosecuted.

All of this can still happen with the strict liability law in place, all that changes is the default position.

and asked our cheerleaders to sit on him

and they say that crime doesn’t pay!

I missed the main debate because I’d already left for work, by bike, without a helmet as it happens. I’ll just go along with whatever Suzanne Reid agrees with.

why do the Dutch and Danes not have compulsary helmet laws?

This morning I was talking to a Dutch guy who has just come back from holiday the UK. One of the things he mentioned was how crazy it seemed that cars and bikes had to share a road where the cars can be going over 100kph – it doesn’t make a lot of sense does it?

My father-in-law is over to stay at the moment and didn’t have my new mobile number so I gave him it. Instead of adding it to the contacts list in his phone he wrote it on the piece of paper that he keeps tucked away in the battery compartment with everyones contact details on.

Sky have bigger plans for Froome , Porte and Uran

Uran has signed for Omega Pharma for next season :wink:

Classics, I’m not 100% convinced, he was breathing out of his arse on ‘Le Redout’ on Saturday which is a fairly typical classic climb, albeit a tough one, and Sky have better classics riders in Boasson Haggen and Stannard who might not take too kindly to being asked to deputise for someone with no classics pedigree.

Edit: Just had a second thought that my post may seem negative. I agree with some of the others that Wiggo has been a massive figurehead for British cycling and his achievements are IMO unparalleled. For me personally one of the most iconic sporting moments of the last few years was seeing Wiggins in Yellow pulling Cav in the Rainbow jersey up the Champs elysees.

Geothermal

And accelerate the cooling of the earths core, are you mad? That will trigger the next ice age. Unless of course we burn enough fossil fuels to balance it out :wink:

The car museum in Den Haag is worth a visit. Just up the road from Den Haag in Wassenaar is Duinrell amusement park which is good for children.

Once you get to Amsterdam maybe take a day trip up to Volendam and catch the ferry over to Markem or even further north to the Groningen coast and go ‘wadlopen’.

The weather is changeable at the moment, one day it’s above 30° and clear skies, the next it’s <20 and thunderstorms so pack for anything!

As a Scotsman I’ll be voting yes because I want a government that will be voted for and be accountable to the Scottish people. Who act in our best interests.

Thank you athepal, very nicely put and a sentiment I also share.

I’d agree with Scottish votes for a Scottish Government. Can’t wait.

Abracadabra alacazam; http://home.scotland.gov.uk/home you have 2 wishes remaining.

Ours had a benign tumour on the top of her head. It started out looking like a spot, I initially thought it was a burried tick or splinter but after about a week it looked like a wart about the size of a pea so we took her to the vets and had a biopsy to check if it was malignant.

It went away by itself after a few weeks.

We dog sat a pug for friends at the weekend and from that experience I would have to say I really wouldn’t bother having one.

It was useless; it couldn’t run at anything above my walking pace, couldn’t fetch anything bigger than a cocktail stick, had to be lifted in and out of the car and was scared of mud and water. It was happy to sit on someones knee and wheeze incessantly for hours though.

If you want a dog, don’t get a pug. I’d rather have a cat.

In your scenario I don’t think it matters where the mass is, some quick calcs taking into account drag, rolling resistance and gravity everything else being equal;

1 mile climb, 180m vertical gain;

67kg rider, 10kg bike, no camelbak = 593 seconds
67kg rider, 13kg bike, no camelbak = 615 seconds
67kg rider, 10kg bike, 5kg camelbak = 630 seconds

This is STW isn’t it? Then how come after 4 pages this has been allowed to go unchallenged;

Thankfully i have vinyl at home.

Vinyl, VINYL, oh my lord, not artisan terracotta tiles, not Alicante marble not even reclaimed Sherwood forest oak treated with free range vegan beeswax but vinyl FFS I bet your bath’s not even real copper is it?

Flounces off in disgust shaking head and muttering vinyl a few more times.

Merged cells? Autofit doesn’t work with those.

Not much piking, but we like bit of fishing;

Mainly on the fly these days, and not so much since we’ve lived in Holland, but there is a carp puddle type lake 200m up the road from us and the little ‘un likes to go for 1/2 an hour every now and again

Post ride or run I try to have a peanut butter and jam sandwich and a pint of water – works pretty well for me and stops me feeling really hungry an hour later.

I’m sure I read something years ago which compared a peanut butter sandwich washed down with flat coke (may have been diluted?) to the latest and greatest sports bar and drink combo and found very little real world difference.

How about these wheels;

http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/tyred-wheels/0400081/

My 7 year old has a Batavus Dutch style bike and it is pretty much as described by walleater. It’s fine as a utility bike for popping to the shops, or around to friends, but for ‘serious’ riding she uses a proper mountain bike. If you are aiming to go on bike rides, then I would strongly urge you to look at a decent mountain/hybrid.

A few more;

A good one once you’ve got the goth chick back home;

A bit obvious but;

Stopper plate on the wrong way round?

I’m an expert in Achilles pain :(

I have been having problems with mine for a while (which stems from footballing injury from a few years ago) and since I’ve upped my running mileage it aches pretty much every morning and during exercise until I’ve warmed up a bit. I went to the physio and he said I have two choices.

First choice was to stop all exercise until it stops hurting and then go back to him for some strengthening/flexibility exercises before gradually introducing more cycling and running. The second choice was basically MTFU, carry on running and cycling, but be sure to do plenty of eccentric stretches and RICE. The only advice I was given contrary to Surfers was not to use an anti-inflammatory during excercise because they can reduce the blood flow?

I took the second option. The worst case scenario was that it could go pop completely and would need an operation. Luckily this hasn’t happened and it’s better this week than it has been for ages. I hardly had any soreness this morning after a long run yesterday.

I honestly don’t know what you lot are moaning about.

I was out for a run last night and when I turned a corner the local tri club was running along in my direction. The ladies at the back all had tight skimpy shorts on and I was certainly in no hurry to pass them. There was no transparency in evidence, but judging by the amount their shorts kept riding up my telekinesis is coming on leaps and bounds.

We use Yammer at work, it gets used mainly for sports and social chat really but a lot of the tech support and service guys use it to ask questions if they don’t know specifically who to direct the question to when out in the field. We never seem to have any problems with it.

You’re moving the material needed to strengthen the frame/fork, not adding it

No you’re not, the loading on a disc caliper is far higher than on a rim brake and is transmitted into a single fork leg / stay. Using a fork as an example, in a rim brake the braking forces are transmitted directly into the fork crown which is stiff and supported by the headset, in a disk brake almost the entire length of the fork leg has to withstand the torque generated at the caliper.

In two places where I used to have a decent commute I had different solutions to the clothes issue;

first one was have two weeks worth of trousers and shirts and at the end of the week take them to a laundrette for a service wash, pick them up the week after when you drop the next lot off.

second place wasn’t close to a laundrette so I asked around and one of the guys took them home and he/his wife washed and ironed them for me for a bottle of wine each week.

Both places had showers though so not much help their I’m afraid.

takes the braking away from the rim so you can have lighter/stronger/stiffer/more aero rims

Disc rims can be lighter, but add in the weight of the rotor and heavier hub and they are pretty much the same. No radial lacing on wheels so spokes are longer (less aero?), longer hose routing, then add in the extra material to locally strengthen the frame and fork and suddenly discs become a much heavier option than rim brakes.

allows much more intricate hose routing – hydraulic hose can be fully internal, can turn corners which cables can’t.

I’ve never had a problem with any bike routing the brake cables, road bike cable routing is really quite straightforward.

much less servicing required

Seriously? I guess you’ve never seen the sticking pistons, contaminated pads, brake fade, boiling and warped rotors threads which crop up on here regularly?

One of the main drawbacks though is that from an aero point of view they are gash, the caliper (particularly the front) is basically a big lump of metal exactly where you don’t want it. I think it was Cervelo that did some testing and found that they were terrible.

There are a few moments when the nighttime noises fade away and world seems to stop completely to take a breath just before dawn breaks. It always gives me goose bumps.

Where’s the additional force coming from to make a heavy person go faster then

Force = Mass x Acceleration. More mass = more force. Gravity (actually the acceleration due to gravity) is an acceleration not a force.

^ I think she was one of the ones in the limo in Budapest :-)

I’ve had a fairly long stag do career, with some friends getting hitched early when we were all in our late teens, right through to some late bloomers in their late 30’s and the last few years the inevitable 2nd time arounds.

Of all the things that we’ve done, the most memorable to me are the bobsleigh run in Riga, Budapest for ‘fully loaded’ limos and AK47’s or going back quite a few years my own in Magaluf/Ibiza where the plan was a long weekend in Magaluf but we got carried away, which was brilliant back then because we were all young and stupid, but wouldn’t work so well now!

The ones which are least memorable are the golf/karting, beer, curry ones. Yes they can be great nights but you won’t be talking about them in 10yrs time.