As far as the Hope customer service legend here on STW goes, if you call them they will just send you the right spacer for free. I don’t think anyone was suggesting taking them back just because they didn’t have the right one included.

About Exactly 50% are below average.

FTFY 😉

And here’s my complaint. Without knowing how many teachers there were in total, we can’t tell whether you finding 2 bad ones is representative of the whole or a statistical anomaly. If there were 20 in total, I’d be inclined to accept your finding, but if there were 1000, it’s possible that you just found 2 bad ones at random and are basing your findings on anomalous data.

The sample size is what matters, not how far you’re going to extrapolate it. If there were 20 teachers, I’d be expecting 4, possibly 5 bad ones. If there were 1000 I’d be expecting 222 (based on available data). The real problem however is that selection isn’t random as Minicat chooses his subjects.

This type of basic misunderstandings of statistics is something that really should be improved. I blame the teachers!

to think that chinese people can’t support theyre own economy by buying their own products is frankly patronising. They can buy there own products,

You’re playing grammar nazi bingo and I claim my five pounds.

Everyone who buys it pays import duty, our government gets their cut. If they then don’t spend it on rebalancing the fact that Chinese goods are cheaper i.e. retraining our unemployed manufacturing workforce into service industry workers, isn’t your problem with the UK government?

Is this the silliest thing you have done using motorised transport?

The survival rate is poor in countries where the medical system is poor, because it’s in Africa at the moment the survival rate has been low. If you’re that bothered, donate money to charities trying to do something about it in the affected countries, or write to your MP.

Interested to hear that both of you find the return slow. My reverb is on full slow setting, and still makes a fairly loud clunk at the top of the travel. On fast it makes a loud clang and hurts my soft parts if I’m not careful.

Is it the air pressure that governs return speed? I got mine from planet x and have never checked the pressure, wouldn’t be too surprised if they’d pumped it up too high.

Im really after a small 3-piece travel safety razor in leather/leatehrette pouch

He has one here for £32.

The site looks good, but he needs to think more about the ranges of products people will buy together. For example, the cheapest safety razor is £17 but the cheapest shaving mug is £26. For someone just getting into traditional shaving that’s not a combination they’re going to buy, he needs some budget options in all product categories if he’s going to have them in some.

Vets should offer a no pet no fee service.

They do. I don’t have a pet, and a vet has never charged me a fee.

What you can sometimes do is connect the old hard drive to a new machine and clone it to the new hard drive. This installs the operating system in its current state onto the new computer and you will then need to mess about with drivers etc. I used this method to switch to SSD on my laptop. However, if you’re going to need a new computer anyway, you’d be much better off doing a clean install and just rescuing photos and other files from the old HDD with a caddy.

To add a dissenting opinion, my dad had his roof done by a guy who massively undercut the competition with very little feedback on a “find a builder” type web site, and he did a great job, stuck to the quote, and got it done ahead of schedule.

However, when giving the quote the bloke explained that he was going round doing any jobs for that particular web site at just above cost in order to get his feedback up to a respectable level. At the time he was making enough money from traditional routes to take a hit while opening up a new revenue stream.

Of course your bloke could just be trying it on, don’t know what this business about not giving a written quote is about…

Read the OP: “I went out on my Motorbike this weekend…”

If there’s room to ride two abreast, there’s room for a motorbike to overtake safely if you’re single file. I’m with OP, cyclists should have moved over in this instance. I could understand them protecting their position from approaching cars, but to not let motorbikes past safely is unneccesary.

Good size, heavy duty, excellent quality, carrying strap – Ortleib back roller classics. They also lift off one-handed, so never really any need to lock them to the bike, and they’re fully waterproof. Traditional STW suggestion of not really what you asked for, but they’ll do the job you want to do better than leaving empty panniers locked to the bike and using a rain cover would.

EDIT – Deals-wise, I got the city version (no carrying strap) from deporvillage.fr for a good price, not sure if it’s still the best price once you’ve added UK postage. Free to France though 8)

Any collection of Asimov’s short stories if you like logic puzzle type things and/or science fiction. They were mostly originally published in magazines so pretty easy to read, and if you get into them you can work your way up to the epic Foundation series.

Also +1 for H2G2, fear and loathing, stephen king and harry potter. All easy reading. Trainspotting is an excellent book but worth saving until you’re a bit more “into” reading as the dialect can be fairly hard going at times.

Also Catch-22. Try looking at GCSE reading lists to see what books are considered fairly easy to read but worth reading (pre-Gove lists that is).

I would agree that buying the phone and going sim only would be the best way to do it. However, to answer the questions in the OP:

You will have to finish paying your current contract. If you want to port your number immediately, that will mean cancelling it and paying the balance (i.e. monthly cost x months left).

The S3 is a 2 year old phone. If you can get a good deal on it now you’ll still be able to in 3 months.

If you’re due an upgrade in a month, call your provider now to organise that. Tell them you want an S3 for free and at least 1GB of data or you’ll just wait out the contract and change provider.

Use uswitch to compare other deals available, and use this guide if you’re thinking of sticking with your current network.

Whatever version of “messed-about with” android you have you shuld be able to set a pin unlock (or at least a swipe pattern on older versions). My advice would be to uninstall the third party pin unlock app and change from swipe unlock to pin unlock in the android settings.

The alternative would be an amplifier and upgraded antenna for your current router. Apparently a good set-up can get 1.5 mile range. I’ve never looked into it closely enough to know if it works out better value than the linked unit though.

I’ve had a Lenovo ideapad z-series for the last 3 and a half years and I’ve just upgraded it to SSD and 8gb of ram. It’s the first laptop I’ve ever had last long enough to upgrade before I’d managed to break it. Highly recommended, as is the bombproof thinkpad, not so sure about their other ranges but I imagine build quality is still good.

If a macbook/mbp really could go 7 years before needing an upgrade and then still be going stong (“more than twice as long” as claimed above) I’d like to hear about it because that would tempt me to pay the extortionate up front cost.

For build quality I’d go for Lenovo every time – in fact I do. The first one I bought was also the first computer I ever upgraded because I hadn’t managed to break it before it felt slow.

Will last you longer than a 2nd hand macbook, and be faster and more upgradable.

How to Make Your Own Ebola Remedy
What you need:
1. A face mask and gloves
2. Two bottles (50 ml up to 500 ml glass or plastic bottles) with caps
3. Clean water (mineral or tap water)
4. An Ebola sample: some spit or other disease product, such as blood, from a person infected with Ebola, or who is suspected sick with it. Any small quantity will do, even a pinhead.
5. An alcoholic liquid, such as whisky, brandy, rum, etc.
6. Half an hour of your time.

Procedure:
1. Fill the bottle with water, leaving about 20% space at the top.
2. Place the Ebola sample in the water in the bottle.
3. Close the top of the bottle with the cap.
4. Hold the bottle and strike it hard against a solid surface, such as a large book, 40 times.
5. Pour out the contents of the bottle.
6. Refill the bottle with water (the fluid remaining on the inside surface of the bottle will serve as the next Ebola sample).
7. Repeat steps 3 to 6 a total of 30 times.

Storage:
1. Pour the bottle solution into another bottle—your stock bottle.
2. Add 10% by volume of the alcoholic liquid (whisky, brandy, etc.) as a preservative.
3. Store in a place away from sunlight and electronic equipment.

Using this stock bottle, you can supply the Ebola remedy to as many people you want. With one drop from the stock bottle as an Ebola sample you can produce another stock bottle to give to someone else. Instead of the original Ebola sample you used above to make the original stock bottle, you use a drop from the first stock bottle. This process can be carried out ad infinitum, supplying a whole city, etc., if needed.

FTFY

If a round involves filling the toaster, I stayed in a hotel where they had a perpetually moving conveyor belt type toaster. How do you do a round in that?

Every so often one of these “perpetual toast machines” turns up, none of them ever stands up to rigorous study though.

What if, my wife disagrees with the op’s wife?

They can’t both be right. What happens now?

Ah, the well-known Schrodinger’s Wife paradox. The Copenhagen interpretation would hold that each wife is simultaneously right in her own home, although if you asked Einstein he would say this was all just “internet twaddle because my wife doesn’t play dice” or something.

“Only 2500 km on the clock bullet proof mechanically”

Just mechanically?

I did the “Monday-Friday in a hotel and back home at the weekend” bit for a few months. I didn’t really like it, but I didn’t expect to either in those circumstances, I’d have rather stayed on the weekends and discovered a bit more of the fun side of London. I’ve been as a tourist a few times and enjoyed it, but once you’ve seen the sights, what has it really got that most large cities haven’t?

Best friend from school lives there now, and fair to say she visits me (Lyon and Paris for the last 3 years) a lot more than I visit her.

To try to answer the OP, I think people moan about visiting because it’s so much bigger than other UK cities. Have you ever lived in Manchester or Birmingham? You can walk across them, drive around them outside rush hour, and if you do use public transport you don’t have to go underground into a small steam room. The usefully close to each other parts of the city centre aren’t taken up by things like whitehall and buckingham palace and trafalgar square, so you can actually walk from the shops to your favourite pub to nandos to the cinema.

I don’t mean this to come off as another anti-London rant, but those of us from other UK cities generally don’t see the extra hassle and expense of London as worth whatever it is that’s supposed to be “better” about living/going there.

Tough garden bin liners: one for wheels, one for frame and fork. Stuff them into rucksack when you get there and you can use them to get home again, and they’re very unlikely to ask you what’s in them (and not sure they’re allowed to either).

My mate does this on the usually super-fussy French TGV to get to the Alps at least once a year.

sq225917 – will you be posting your own personal musings about life, the universe and everything on the planet x twitter feed too?

Coincidentally, seeing a bike referred to as “she” makes me approximately as uncomfortable as the superfluous commas in the first sentecne of the OP.

Not sure this is allowed here, but in the interests of suggesting something that actually fits the criteria you listed, the Samsung Galaxy Ace 3 is £140 on Amazon (or about 150 from anywhere that pays tax) and has a replaceable battery and 4 inch screen. It unfortunately runs Samsund Android rather than stock.

If by “must most definitely have a cover you can pop off to change the battery” you meant “I don’t mind a phone with a captive, unreplacable battery” then I’d still reccommend going for a used Nexus 4 rather than a Moto G, especially if you don’t need 4G.

Take the kids caving! There was a family with two girls under 10 when we did it in Ardèche, it was great fun and nice to get out of the heat for a while. I enjoyed it much more than I was expecting to.

In my experience most places you go will have a local activity type place that will do kayaking, caving, climbing and maybe go karting, off road buggies or quad bikes. Ask at the camp site/hotel/tourist office.

Almonds

+1 for the Nexus 5, pretty much best bang for buck there is on android in terms of computing power and google support. Google will be fairly sure to make certain updates to android don’t cripple it for the next couple of years so good marks for future proofing too.

That said, they’ll probably bring out a new Nexus around November time. Could be worth getting a second hand android to make sure you like it/can live with it, and sell it on to get the newer Nexus once you’re sure.

To what extent is glass integrated with android handsets at this stage? As it’s all beta, does it really matter if you’re using an iphone alongside? And if you can afford glass, you can afford a shiny new S5, Shirley?

Try freecycle?

Is Froome sneezing in that gif?

Try homelidays France too, alps appartments are pretty empty in the summer so go pretty cheap, 150-200 euros a week for the most basic.

You need a geeky girls name that’s not Ada and you can’t think of one?

I’ll give you a clue – there’s only one person ever won Nobel prizes in two different sciences, and it’s a woman. She was also the first woman to win a Nobel.

I live in France and use first row sports, a quick google should find it. There’s usually 10 or so links per game and I’ve found UK terrestrial coverage has been one of the first three links for every game I’ve watched that way this world cup.

I only moved to France for work reasons, the cost of living is ridiculous. However, very few countries have as good banking systems as the UK with free accounts and good special offers, most make you pay for a basic current account. UK bank accounts you can leave open when you leave, but you can’t open from abroad.

My advice: get a good credit card you can spend on abroad before you leave: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/cheap-travel-money

Put spending money in a current account set up to pay the credit card off in full at the end of each month. If you’re moving to a country with HSBC, get their account in both countries because transfers online are free now. That will pay for direct debits etc in the new country and anything you can only pay in cash.

Then get 2 santander 1-2-3 accounts for 3% interest on your first 40 grand (they are 20 grand maximum each but you can get 2).

Put any spare in the highest interest account you can find, and after you’ve left inform the bank that you no longer pay UK tax so they don’t have to automatically deduct it any more. Don’t put any more than 85 grand in any one bank as that’s how much is protected if they go bump.

As an added bonus, if you regularly spend on a credit card and pay off in full you should have a pretty good credit score if and when you move back to the UK.

But how much fiddling do you really want to do on a ride?

Are you new here?

http://www.merlincycles.com/shimano-disc-brakes-44141/

Free shipping to France but not to Switzerland, fine if you’ve got a mate over the border though.

As for ice-tech, apparently just getting the rotors but not the finned pads isn’t a good idea as the rotors are designed to send heat into the pads to be disspated by the fins. This could just be Shimano marketing guff though. If you’re just looking for reliability got for no fins and stick with your current rotors.

Other thing to note is they’re not flip-flop like avids, so if you want to run your brakes backwards like the French you’ll need to specify when ordering or swap the levers round yourself.