Most bean-to-cup machines, even pretty cheap ones, let you put ground coffee in instead (and will detect when you do this and bypass the bean/grinder part). Get one of these and some decaf beans, work out the right grind setting for a nice cup from the machine and bob’s your uncle.

Links aren’t very obvious on the new forum; “these” points here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hario-MSS-1DTB-Mini-mill-Coffee-Grinder/dp/B01GPMH590/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1533314602&sr=8-3&keywords=hario+grinder

Last I looked there were fixes (5 year from Coventry BS) which allowed unlimited overpayments at the expense of a less competitive interest rate. Having spoken to a broker I was told that I was ineligible for that one as I hadn’t lived in the UK for the whole of the last 5 years. That for me is the value of a broker – they can save you time and black marks on the credit record applying for things that you can’t get on a technicality. There are good fee-free ones around.

IIRC you can usually get a new deal agreed from anywhere, not just your current provider, 3 months in advance of the mortgage renewal and they will honour it even if rates go up in the meantime.

I probably should have mentioned we’re doing it over 3 days 😁 it’s still been pretty epic but as the route is a few years old much of the singletrack has overgrown. I probably wouldn’t recommend it without a decent amount of local knowledge to find some alternative routes in the middle part between Abergavenny and Treharris.

It’s possibly not as clear on the new forum, the word “this” is a link in the OP.

It’s this one: http://www.mbr.co.uk/routes/wales/mountain-bike-route-cwm-carn-to-afan-276853

The OP mentioned doing it in a couple of years

I think you’ve misunderstood. The OP hasn’t done it for a couple of years, but is intending to do it again soon.

Just to bring a bit of balance, I bought a used 2006 bike in 2011 which was still on its original FSA ISIS BB. I then rode it as my only bike for a couple of years, and then as my second bike for a couple of years, then left it in a basement for a few years before transferring all of the parts to a pub bike last year and the BB is still going strong. If it ever goes I’ll replace the cranks, but only because replacement ISIS BBs are expensive now. Maybe I just got lucky.

He should seek advice from a fee-free broker. I used L&C and they basically pared down the list based on my personal circumstances (not lived in UK for the whole of the last 3 years, for example) to avoid any kind of automatic rejection. They should then be able to present his options to him before applying, including letting him know how likely he is to be accepted and which documentation the lender will want to see.

These places are generally happy to give advice over the phone and then wait for you to contact them again before actually going ahead with anything.

The thread has listed most of my grammar pet peeves, but the worst one of all? Using a bloody question mark when you should use a bloody colon!

(I blame Buzzfeed)

I haven’t read the whole thread so this may already have been said, but you can buy microwaveable packets of fresh veg from most supermarkets. It’s usually a mix of things so not too boring and you can just stick them on a plate with whatever you’d usually have with chips. The microwave just steams them so they come out quite nicely and not all soggy and horrible.

Black pudding and pineapple

seosamh77

it keeps you actively learning and thinking
Tbh that’s really my only goal here. I’ve been playing around with the idea of doing something at the OU for years, and recently I’ve got more interested in learning Spanish properly again. So banging those 2 aspiration together sounds like the right thing to do.[/quote]

Based on your reasons for doing the course, I’d throw another couple of suggestions out there:

1. Look for expatriate positions in your industry. You’d get paid to learn Spanish rather than pay, full immersion would bring your level in the language on much more, and you mentioned you don’t have kids which would make it easier. There’s not many industries that don’t exist somewhere in Spain or South America, although looking for Spanish-owned UK businesses might be you best bet (this is what I did to learn French).

2. Take a career break and live abroad. If you’ve got enough savings to pay for OU you could move somewhere cheap in South America on a student visa for a year and study Spanish (I did this in Colombia).

Obviously these are both pretty radical solutions, but classroom learning a language is so different to learning it in the country where it’s spoken natively, plus you get to learn all of the cultural differences. It definitely keeps your brain pretty engaged too.

Brings this to mind.

Firstly, it is usually easier to write a double negative than it is to interpret it.
Secondly, unless the description of an event which is considered to be not without consequence includes a double or higher-order negative, then it cannot be disproven that the writer has neglected to eliminate other interpretations of the event which are not satisfactory in light of other possibly not unrelated events which might not have occurred at all.

There is a posh organic (“bio”) supermarket called Naturalia which may be better for finding truly GF stuff or have more options than a normal supermarket if there’s one near where you’re going.

Is the Reverb lever the new paddle one or the older push-button one? If it’s the older type, I’m sure a southpaw would clear it as it clears my gripshift which sticks about as far out from the bar. Not sure about the wolftooth or bikeyoke ones specifically but they seem to be the same sort of concept as the southpaw and I’d be surprised if they weren’t adjustable enough to clear a push-button reverb remote.

Is the shapeshifter actuation just a cable? I’m on Jekyll with a similar thing to the shapeshifter and I use a left hand gripshift to actuate it, with the southpaw KS remote below it.

That said, if your reverb remote is on the right, why not use a left-hand dropper remote for the shapeshifter?

Ive got this one and it’s been faultless for a couple of years. It’s expensive at the moment but I paid about £13 and it goes down to that quite frequently. If you’re bothered about cost and not in a rush put a price alert on that one, otherwise go for the Anker which will be better at £20-odd.

Uber. Can’t be bothered talking to someone one the phone, trying to describe where I am and then waiting 20 minutes for a taxi, Uber does all that in a couple of clicks and I don’t even have to get my wallet out to pay at the end. Even more useful abroad when you don’t speak the language.

In keeping with the STW tradition of recommending something opposite to what you asked for, it isn’t exactly a huge investment.

I like “Mark Flabendish”. Bradley Piggins?

pizza sagan[/quote]

Crisps Froome

Practised standing on just my left leg, arms out, arms in, eyes open and eyes closed.

Physicist here. First of all:

The universe is estimated to be approximately 13.8bn years old. The most distant galaxy so far observed formed 13.76bn years ago, just 400m years after the Big Bang

13.8 billion – 13.76 billion = 40 million, so one of these figures is wrong.

yes the “red shift” Wavelength of light gets longer as the light from distant galaxies reaches us, ie shifted to red end of visable light spectrum

You’re confounding two different things here. The red shift gets greater because those objects are receding faster. They’re further away because they’re receding faster than the objects that are closer, and always have been. Nothing to do with acceleration.

If we can observe a galaxy that is 13.76bn years old and therefore existing only 400m years after the big bang, does that not mean that the areas of spacetime we cannot observe (because they are receding too fast) are only those areas that came into existence and have subsequently evolved between time point zero and +400m years?

You’re confusing the visible universe with the observable universe. The observable universe is the age of the universe multiplied by the speed of light (potentially “visible” using gravitational waves or something else unaffected by opacity to photons). The visible universe is smaller, as it only includes anything after the universe was no longer opaque. There’s nothing to suggest that the observable universe is the whole universe.

I can accept the awesomeness of tartiflette, but I’d have to dispute that its awesomeness is potato-derived.

Dauphinoise potatoes are the pinnacle of the art and that’s that.

For someone earning £80k every £1 they earn at that level is taxed at 54.8p hence my calculation. When people talk about salaries and earnings they talk about the gross salary of the employee so adding in employers NI and expressing that relative to the stated salary is the right calculation in my view.

This is wrong because the 54.8p is taken out of a 112.8p cost to the employer of employing that person raising their salary by £1. If you’re going to add it to the tax you have to add it to the salary too. That gives a marginal tax rate of 48.6%, the employee taking home 51.4% of the cost to employ him of £1 increase in salary(58p out of 112.8p).

Anyone beat 94?

I think I recommend them on every STW book thread, but the Red Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson seem to fit the bill here pretty well. Long, sci-fi, but also a bit of political intrigue. Very good stuff.

Can someone explain to me where all the Quintana hate is coming from? I quite like him, but I know I’m biased (Colombian wife).

I’m going to go out on a limb and predict:

1. Froome
2. Quintana

My money is on Speedy Dave coming straight on this thread after the ride to gloat about smashing OP to bits after lurking all this time.

Christ I even see the bookies open at like 8pm on a sunday night! what’s that all about?.

I read an interesting article on that very subject recently:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/31/big-gamble-dangerous-british-betting-shops

No repair suggestion, just a reminder that they have 5 year waterproof guarantee, so if they’re less old than that I’d contact Ortlieb first

Only thing I can suggest that improves a phone camera is a physical shutter button on the top where you’d find it on a normal camera. Really helps take photos, and I miss it now I don’t have one.

Volume down button does this job on every android I’ve tried it on, and AFAIK on iPhones too.

+1 for Giro DNDs here. I’ve got 2 pairs.

None left in the Aldi I popped into at lunch. Got some 3-in-1 spray silicone for the fork stanchions for a couple of quid though.

Edit: Brook Way Bradley Stoke store if anyone is thinking of looking there.

My go-to recovery drink is:

Half a banana (eat the other half while making it)
tablespoon peanut butter
1 scoop vanilla protein powder
handful of spinach
almond milk

As above, unless your almond milk is kept seriously cold or using frozen spinach, add some ice or it’ll be warmer than you expect. Happy birthday 🙂

Have you shut down the computer and turned it back on again?

Will be transferring my HTB into a LISA shortly. More so that I’m not limited on what I can save, £4000 per year (LISA) vs £2400 (HTB) with no caps on monthly amounts etc. It appears only HL have them, not confident playing stocks and shares yet so will just be having it as cash.

I’m also thinking of doing this, but it’s worth bearing in mind that you have to wait 12 months to buy, so if you wait until a cash one is available you wont be able to buy before roughly summer 2018. I’m looking to buy earlier so will open a LISA with a quid on the off chance everything gets delayed enough that I can use it. Also living in Bristol it’s possible that the 250 grand limit won’t be enough for where we want to live, so we may end up waiting just to access the higher limit of the LISA (450k).

I work in nuclear power. I feel like I’m both getting paid well and contributing to the future of the planet by helping reduce the level of CO2 emitted to generate our electricity, but I’m well aware that some people think I’m just out to give their kids cancer / kill baby robins.

I should qualify my earlier comment about my nieces – the first hated the balance bike and was straight onto the pedal bike without stabilisers. Neither of them had stabilisers, just one started straight on pedals and the other didn’t.

Out of two nieces, the first never got on with a balance bike and was straight onto a pedal bike, she’s now onto gears and the occasional blue trail at the age of 5. the second loved her sister’s balance bike so much they bought her another one and she’s still on it at the age of 3.

Get her the one she wants. The happier she is on it the more she’ll ride it.