deadlydarcy – Member

I’m very tempted. Are they good shades?

Not bad at that money. I’ve a pair which served me well till I rode over them. Not oakley standard by any stretch though.

Northwind

Nah, not really. A good 6-inch bike isn’t just for big hits.

Pretty subjective. The last time I rode a 160mm bike on easy to moderate stuff I was pretty bored, I couldnt feel the trail and I could just plow instead of pick lines. I was able to land stuff in a pretty lazy fashion knowing the bike would mop up my lack of technique. The flip side of that is when I rode the same bike on a dh run I was thinking, maybe I should have worn my full face.

geetee1972

I’ve ridden one that weighed 27lbs. That was what really blew me away.

When you can have a 160mm bike that is as light, if not lighter, than your average 140mm bike, and pedals as well, why wouldn’t you want to have that?

Because it’d make anything short of a dh track pretty uninspiring. And if you wanted to ride dh with any real venom you’d need some big heavy tyres and blah blah blah blah……

peterfile

I’ve got a Cove Shocker for DH, so looking for something a little less full on for general thumping around when it’s a bit too rough for my skills on the HT.

Can’t believe I overlooked the G-Spot!

It’s like a baby Shocker

Reading above just goes to show how subjective opinions are. I’ve ridden the 3 bikes you’ve mentioned, I own an 07 sx trail with Totems, 823s and a mixture of strong but light stuff.

My 2cents would be that if you already own a shocker then ignore them all. If you set any of them up as intended they will only be a hair away from the shocker. My sx trail is imo a better dh bike than many dedicated dh race bikes I’ve tried .

I’d go for something in the 140-160mm range if I was in your position, and personally I’d struggle to look past an enduro. Then again, those bikes are so capable that unless I had a chairlift, I’d hardly ever ride a full on dh bike if I had a 160mm bike, so I went for a 120mm full susser to keep things distinctly different.

Yes, basically size. I believe they have the same nose pieces, ear socks, and have a pretty much identical lens removal mechanism. Split jackets are just a bit more compact and hence, a lot less comical looking.

I’m guessing you’re referring to the Vanderham one? If so….that’s Vanderham. So sssshhh.

jam bo

that lapierre thingy that nico is riding on the dirt website front page looks quite tidy.

The new X-FLOW. That is hands down the best bike Lapierre do. And they’ve been pretty quiet about it till now. It’s much better balanced and more fun than a zesty in my opinion and still very capable.

But I still prefer my Ghost AMR – it’s a 120mm bike but I never feel out gunned on it. The geo is perfect for the more aggressive trail rider, super short back end means it corners and manuals amazingly and it uses it’s travel in such a controlled way, and is so stiff it feels way more than what it actually is.

I think James Wilson (mtb strength & conditioning) has a load of videos on pinkbike, many of them using kettlebells. He seems to know his stuff. I should be careful though, he is a bit like Candyman or something, say his name on a forum and the thread invariably descends into a slanging match of flats vs clips.

There ya go.[/url]

I went from 170mm coil lyriks to Totems on my SX Trail as I was looking for extra stiffness – they deliver in spades. The lyriks just felt flexy and squinty, putting totems on the bike transformed it from a big hitting trail bike to a mini dh bike, if that makes sense. I did consider boxxers but having tried a few sx trails with that type of setup I went for single crowns. Damping felt better on the totems too.

I can’t explain why, but dual crowns, even set to the same a2c height as totems just felt wrong for the bike. It might have been something I could have ironed out with some experimentation but I never went down that route.

Wet Screams.

Spesh storm control toobliss or maxxis medusa ust.

Complete pot luck based on rim and tyre,ply etc. Tubless ready and toobliss will obviously work. Most dualy ply maxxis ime have worked fine too.

God awful. They might want to involve cyclists at some level the next time they decide to do a feature on bicycles. Just a thought. Idiots.

C’mon, why would I read all that again.

thisisnotaspoon .

Yes, it’s a well known fact that everyone was blind beyond middle age because Oakley hadn’t come allong to save them! Do you wear Oakleys 24/7, or is it just sunshine whilst riding the bike that causes blindness?

Tinted glass that doesn’t cut down uv rays causes pupil dilation allowing more uv into the eye than would be possible were you to simply squint.

Basically, no sunglasses are better for your eyes than cheap nasty ones as your natural squinting reflex protects them. There are documented cases of people damaging their eyesight by wearing cheap sunglasses in sunny climbs. May not be something to worry about in a forest in Scotland though. Maybe.

metalheart
B r: the shop claimed it weighed ~29 lbs sans pedals.

Sounds a bit optimistic.

As yet, none of my exposure chargers have exploded. Which is nice.

bwaarp – Member

A lot of people are saying the 48fps in the Hobbit looks terrible? Like a day time soap opera show?

A lot of people have seen The Hobbit?

Does no one else worry that Deal Extreme is in fact some sort of giant data gathering device devised by the Chinese government to collect all our financial data in order to, at a pre determined time, purge all the bank accounts of people in the western world sending it spiralling into financial turmoil, thus enabling an easy take over?

Only one?

colournoise – Member

Just pondering and reading some of the stuff about reactions to The Hobbit and its 48fps version.

Talking consumer gear and hobbyist level productions though.

What do we see as the pros and cons of 1080p 25/30fps against 720p 60fps (assuming the hardware won’t do 1080/60)?

Currently moving towards 720/60 myself I think (certainly for bike stuff).

slainte rob

The main reason they are shooting The Hobbit at 48 fps is because they can. If a film maker can afford to store, process and edit the extra data (which they can) then they will. It gives them much more creative freedom in post. Plus it will have the added benefit of adding clarity and definition to 3d versions of the film.

For you or the average joe, I would say you almost certainly don’t need to worry about it. If you plan to do slow mo, shoot the highest frame rate you can achieve at your final output res. If you want your finished piece to look cinematic aim for 24 fps.

Ben deserves to do well at this. Shame he couldn’t maintain his worldcup efforts as he was on the pace. Clearly a brilliant rider and comes across as a top bloke.

Any grown man over 9 stone is probably a L/XL.

cookeaa

The worst ones IME are ~35-45 Male dog walkers as they are quite often seething balls of pent up middle age rage, I presume it’s because their lives haven’t turned out as they hoped and they find themselves effectively oppressed by family commitments etc, walking their spouses/childrens Dog rather than persuing their own interests…

I’d agree but extend the upper age of that. Male dog walkers 35 and beyond really tend to be out hating life. A toy dog is a pretty obvious sign they are walking their wife or daughters dog, which they hate, which embarrasses them, never mind having to scoop up it’s muck….

Just avoid them, same as if you see someone driving a Citroen Xsara MPV on any UK motorway, just stay well clear the reek of Mid-life failure is all over them and they’ll either try to out run it or feel like a winner by picking a pointless fight with a stranger…

This is a phenomena I’ve observed a lot recently – the super aggressive people carrier man. Not sure how he escaped my notice so long, but he is now right up there with van man, merc gent and Audi c**k. All of whom can tailgate, speed and drive light ****s with superhuman ability!

Obviously quite a subjective thing but for my money

Mattias Fredriksson[/url]

and Sterling lorence are the two best in the business. Sven Martin is pretty handy with a camera too.

Superficial

I’ve got an Altura Attack X jacket with eVent which is very nice. 100% waterproof and very breatheable. It’s slightly more substantial than a pure overcoat / shower jacket, so it seems pretty resilient and it’s been great for the last 2 winters with no signs of problems. Plenty of pockets (my favourite thing) and nice big vents.

I had an Altura Attack X. I slipped on some snow and busted a hole in it. Bad luck I thought and repaired it. Then I fell off (from stationary) into a big pile of leaves and mulch, busting the other shoulder. At this point i sent it back to Altura for warranty as it appeared to have the strength of toilet paper. They sent it back to me claiming it wasn’t designed for what I was doing in it.

So the rugged mountain bike specific Attack Xtreme mtb jacket is not suitable for mountainbiking. Resigned to the fact i was stuck with it I wore it again, washed it and the seams fell apart, Altura refused to warranty it for this as apparently they don’t inspect anything twice. Thanks Altura.

see how YOU like being buzzed (polite use) by a group of 6 or 7 downhilling tossers who neither shout nor bell from behind

Sorry, why do they have to be downhilling tossers? Are they tossers just because they are downhillers? are they tossers who happened to be downhilling, or did you and your family and your inlaws and your dogs and your fish and your chickens and goats get lost and end up walking down a downhill track?

Pointless really. People will not notice the bell or won’t be able to hear because of their own headphones, or they’ll just deliberately ignore you.

A good loud freehub, a quick lock of break or a shout is just as good for the ones not wearing headphones. for the others it’s airhorn time.

bwaarp

My problem with Totems is that although they were stiff laterally and torsionally, the fact that they were almost as tall as boxxers, coupled with wide bars and a non-integrated stem meant that they felt noodly at the stem/fork interface.

To be fair though that’s just the stiffness of the fork showing up the lack of stiffness in your cockpit. It’s not something I’ve had a problem with running renthal fatbars and various stems.

I’d take your point about a totem vs boxxer, 888 or 40 though. It’s hard to justify them though I’d say they contribute to a more playful feel. Would disagree about the 66s. I’ve owned both and would rate the totems highly over 66s

I think some people are confusing short chainstays with a short wheelbase or assuming that the two go hand in hand which is not necessarily the case.

Short chainstays on their own…..means nothing. it’s how they fit the bikes geometry as a whole and what your preference is as a rider.

In my experience they are a pretty bombproof fork. No issues reliability wise, nor has anyone I know who owns a pair of the coils. There were issues with the original airs though.

They are a fantastically damped fork, better performance than a lyrik imo and they are stiff as a bastard, insanely so. However, they are overkill for most riding short of a dh track where a triple clamp will give better leverage. They are the perfect compliment to a short travel/ mini dh play bike.

I have literally not seen that.

fbk – Member

Doesn’t the Spicy come in carbon now?

Yes, the 916. The 2011 zesty had iscg tabs so I’d presume the 2012 one will as well. Zesty and spicy not available as frame only though which is what I pressume the op wants.

it sounds like the op is choosing his carbon frame based on the rear wheel and cg of his existing bike? Personally I’d get the bike with the best geometry and performance which would be an enduro/stumpjumper without a shadow of a doubt depending what side of 5 or 6 inches he wants to choose from..

Troy Lee.

chrisdw

@jimjam, you could have had 15% off if you emailed dr_death

I needed it on the spot so had to pay full whack anyway.

Thanks guys. I ended up going for 2.3ghz i7 13″ and was able to wangle 5% off rrp which I was happy enough with.

MrSmith – Member

I’ve got two screens that should suffice, I’m more worried about the grunt needed to actually cut.

i’m using FCP-x and not bothering with a proxy but editing native 5dII footage, it’s only when retiming do you get the progress thingy counting down but it’s never for very long, these are only short clips in a 2min short. i’m using 8gb ram and shortly upgrading to 16gb as it’s so cheap now.
i do have an SSD in the media bay as a scratch and working files drive so this is speeding performance up (i did edit before the upgrade)

the bottleneck is the 5500rpm HD though, eliminate that and the machine will be even faster.

depending on if your software can use more than 2 cores then look at the 15in with 4 cores from the refurb store, do not be put off by the lower clock speed the current macbookpros are as fast as the macpro towers.

i run a 24in hd monitor with no problems but i tried the Davinci resolve lite grading software and it said the card was not open gl enabled which is odd as open-gl works in CS so i need to look into that. it may need Lion for this to work.

currys have some mac deals on at the mo.

What model do you have Mrsmith? I’d imagine I’ll be cutting mostly dslr footage myself. Are you saying that if you have a fast external drive to work off it’ll be okay? Appologies, it’s been a few years since I edited professionally and am just not au fait with the current processor models and what they are really capable of.

Northwind

I remember hearing somewhere that top class extreme sportspeople tend to have messed up adrenaline response which basically requires them to seek out higher levels of extremity to keep the same level of thrill. So these are the guys who do a scary jump when they’re kids and no matter the result have to go bigger next time.

I wouldn’t apply that to any competitive athlete in what could broadly be described as a mainstream sport. A base jumper maybe, where one in sixty participants dies, but not DH. In the same way I wouldn’t apply it to any F1 driver, Moto GP racer, cage fighter etc. They are competitive athletes in dangerous sports but I think it’s the love of the sport, and the desire to compete that drives them, not an addiction to adrenaline.

Someone like Jeb Corliss on the other hand I firmly believe is an adrenaline junkie and it’s quite obvious when you listen to him talk about his sport.

Drac – Moderator

Do you know any students are someone who works in the NHS as you’ll get discount that way.

Damnit I don’t.

CountZero – Member

I would go to either John Lewis, or an Apple Premier retailer, like Farpoint in Walcot Street in Bath. While you may not be able to negotiate on retail price, you may be able to wangle some extras, like some more RAM or something. No guarantee’s, but it’s possible. When I bought my Mac Mini I had the optical removed and a second HDD installed in the bay. While they were at it they found some RAM on a shelf and stuck it in for free, taking it from 2 to 4Gb.

That’s good to know and I appreciate the advice. I am in belfast so I am limited to currys/pc world or the apple store as far as I know. I suppose some free ram is not to be sniffed at, or a mouse which I could sell or something.

As far as editing 1080HD footage is concerned, well you’ll need an external 1080 screen anyway, as the 13″ MacBook only has a 1280×800 resolution screen.

I’ve got two screens that should suffice, I’m more worried about the grunt needed to actually cut.