If you’re insisting on using whey protein, look at http://www.myprotein.com

I use their Hurricane XS

However, I would suggest that sticking to a healthy balanced diet is sufficient for most workouts unless you’re specifically bulking up.

But granted, they can taste great & are convenient.

Not seen any lights/trees etc yet, but my sister claims to have finished all her Christmas shopping already.

Which I don’t understand because I’ve not sent her my wish list yet 🙂

I can’t see why darts and shooting type stuff should be split

I was almost going to ask “are there any sports that are male/female segregated for no apparent reason?” ..

that ship could be part of the celebrations around the Olympics

what the flip has this floating museum battleship got to do with the Olympic Games?

Other than being dull, grey and wet … a bit like next summer’s weather will be

I used a Student promo code to buy some Fox forks from Wheelies last year.

I’m not a student.

Nobody queried it.

I guess if someone did want to be awkward & ask for proof of your eligibility you could just cancel the order.

wheeies.co.uk

use promo code FORD

Fox Float 150 RLC FIT 2012 (QR15, tapered steerer) for £683

lockring removal – are you referring to shimano centrelock discs, or removing a cassette?

if the latter, I have the tools. In Marple.

monkeyp – interesting post.

I have been toying with doing the same, although with no real conviction to follow through with it yet.

The main reason for not is winter, i.e. snow/ice on 2 wheels = dangerous/lethal.

Seeing as I cycle commute at least 3 days a week for 7 or 8 months of the year, and would use the car to a certain extent over the winter when it’s snowy/icy/seriously windy(?), I have not convinced myself it’s really worth it for me seeing as the main reason for doing it would be to save money on fuel.

My commute is only a 23 mile round trip (115miles/week = £20-£25/week petrol in my Vectra)

Something like the Honda PCX 125 would probably reduce my petrol consumption by at least 66%.

But then there’s also insurance, servicing etc.

If veganism is a choice based on the cruelty in farming animals is it acceptable for a vegan to eat roadkill?

Or perhaps they could wait around for animals to die naturally.
(Granted, it’s not very practical.)

… or perhaps a Parents veganism/vegetarianism isn’t a moral decision, but just “I don’t like meat”

Keeping up with the Jones’s – nice house, big car, latest TV, better bomb capability etc …

I was bought up veggie because my in my parents opinion it was the healthiest option. Thats what you do as parents, you do what YOU think is best. If that happens to be veggie, meat eating, vegan, fish only so what. All this stuff about lack of choice, forcing believes on kids is baloney (do you like what I did). As adults we’re there to make informed choices for them.

So if the choices I make (or would make, early days yet!) as a parent aren’t the same as you would make, you don’t like it and you want to tell me about it, jog on.

Ditto the above.

Until such as age that they are able to make certain decisions for themselves, I see no problem with bringing a child up in line with your own morals, lifestyle, religious beliefs etc.

To develop strength without particularly bulking up I’d recommend body weight exercises, alongside a sensible healthy diet.

Personally, I just keep it simple and informal.

Alongside the cycling/MTBing I do sets of press-ups, pull-ups, chin-ups, sit-ups, sometimes bicep curls and tricep dips (although the press-ups & chin-ups work the arms to a decent extent for my purposes).

This seems to give me good muscle tone and an extra bit of strength in my arms/shoulders/back.

I generally aim for sets of 15-20 reps.

sugdenr – yeh, it’s filter I’m after

We had the official Olympic Torch prototype at our office recently.

Just think: the opportunity to see and touch something that isn’t the olympic torch! 😕

I could hardly contain myself.

🙄

If I indicate, but there’s nobody around to see it, do they make any light?

about a thousand times more people die on our roads in year than other transport means, yet there isn’t any where near the same regulation.

For some reason road deaths are an accepted risk.

If anything else caused as much death, injury & damage as motoring it’d be banned.

Didn’t take long to get into the usual STW anti-religion christian bashing!

Apparently Christians are fair game. But nobody would dare make a similar comment about Muslims because they’d be lynched.

Anyhow, back on-topic.

Re. deterrents: every motoring offence (yes, even the piffling minor ones) should carry a minimum penalty of having your car crushed to the size of a satsuma & being invoiced for it.

Most people can relate to ‘hands’ though?

But who’s hands?

Clearly not a childs hand, but adult hands can vary significantly

I might start stating my height in hands from now on.

never understood mearuring horses hands

Whilst the rest of the world was using a tape measure or some such thing to quantify size using a universally recognised unit, some obtuse so-and-so decides that for horses “no, we’ll use hands for measuring the size of this” … and for some reason, ever since nobody dare express a horse height in terms of anything that people actually relate to.

please google stopping/thinking distances…

The thinking or stopping distance whilst sat at a red light is probably zero.

oldnpastit – sounds like the voice of experience 🙂

The green light is the symbol that you can go though, isn’t it? It’s not the symbol to race off as quick as possible. Some people aren’t as quick as others off the lights – it’s not really a big deal.
Should everyone accelerate to their cars maximum capability off the lights too?

It’s not about speed, just the unneccessary long delays getting moving at all.

44.4 London buses

Thank goodness. Someone finally posted a measurement using the universally recognised unit of London Bus.

Now can someone please post a picture showing the asteroid in relation to a blue whale (side profile) and/or a Boeing 747 (plan view).

Or maybe next to some internationally recognised landmarks – Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty etc

Thanks

synchronise everyone to move off at exactly the same time, accelerate at the same rate and stop accelerating at the same speed, then you could all set off at the same time.

Perfectly possible. Just requires everyone to pay proper attention.

If I can do it, and I’m nothing special …

Oh I’m never in a hurry. Usually only going to work so not that keen to get there quickly 🙂

I just find it odd that it can take so long for drivers to get going at a green light. Something you’re expecting to happen shouldn’t really catch you off guard to that extent.

There’d be much shorter queues if everyone was more on the ball as more vehicles would get through the lights on each cycle.

Perhaps this is the damage caused by 7 months of cycle commuting – I’ve been used to sailing smugly past all the drones in tin boxes …

retailer in “sometimes we get it wrong” shocker

🙄

let he who is perfect … etc

Excellent advice & suggestions so far.

Plenty of food for thought.

Thanks all.

I always leave the bedroom door open

Also try to crack the window a bit, but then the room gets flipping freezing over night.

wwaswas – true. I’m not expecting it to be completely silent, I could cope with a fridge-esque noise,

I have a bad humidity/condensation problem in my house, very similar to what the OP describes.

Had an expert come and check it out. Conslusion was it was definitely all just due to ‘living conditions’ – i.e. condensation/damp generated by ourselves as opposed to damp ingress from externally.

Suggested solution was fitting a ventilator type thing in the loft that would blow dry air from the loft space into the upstairs hallway, thus creating a slight positive pressure and forcing the damp air in the living space to circulate more and be pushed out through vents/open windows.

£500 fitted apparently.

I might try a dehumidifier for now as I can’t afford the £500.

Plus, I figured that blowing freezing cold air from the loft into the house is going to wreak havoc with heating bills.

Nights aren’t darker, so what’s the need for all these brighter headlight bulbs these days? (Seeing as dipped beam is primarily just so you’re visible to others rather than to light up the road – which is always what I thought full beam was for)

(prepares to be humiliated for the stupid question, and for answers of questionable/dubious reasoning)

😀

As per the old adage … “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Comrade.”

young drivers WILL crash their car at some stage, we’ve all been there

As a ‘young driver’, I never did
& my sister never did
& my other sister never did

None of us have ever crashed any cars since not being a ‘young driver’

Yet, as a ‘young driver’ we were all penalised when buying insurance because everyone assumes you’re going to spend every waking hour until you’re 25 crashing.

Risk should be based on an individuals performance, not just tarring everyone with the same brush.

In my opinion, it should be ‘innocent until proved guilty’: insurance for young drivers should be the same as for over 25’s UNTIL their insurance is claimed against, at which point they’ve demonstrated they’re a higher risk & therefore should pay massive insurance prices.

But there’s probably some reason(s) why that wouldn’t work.

Its actually cheaper in relation to average incomes than it used to be

Damn.

In which case, our lives have been filled with so much other expense that we can no longer afford for our kids to drive.

When my parents were my age they never paid a Mobile Phone contract (or 2), Broadband/Digital TV contract, gas/electricity/petrol was (relatively) cheap, owning 2 cars was the exception …

A lot comes down to priorities I suppose.

Of course since the world all broke in 2008, nobody can afford anything anymore.

“Mummy Mummy, when will I grow up?”

“Don’t be silly son, you’re a bloke, you’ll never grow up”

fully comp is normally cheaper than TPFT

Ditto this.

As I dicovered fairly recently, it’s a common misconception that 3rd Party is cheaper than Fully Comp, especially for young/inexperienced drivers.

There’s a massive difference between ‘wanting’ and ‘needing’ a car.

I was fortunate. My parents could afford to insure me as a named driver when I was 17 (although this was almost 20 yrs ago so maybe insuring young drivers wasn’t so expensive back then).

But I didn’t need a car.

I get the impression that the current generation seem to expect to have their own car, or at least access to a parents car whenever they want, regardless of whether it’s necessary.

Probably because my generation seem incapable of going anywhere unless it’s by car, so todays youth have grown up thinking a car is essential/mandatory.

Of course, the other big change since I learnt to drive is the cost. Owning/running a car is less accessible due to the huge expense.

Fish and chips = the blandest national dish going.

Quite approriate then, seeing as we’re one of the blandest nations going…

We’re animals ?!?!

😯

See also, homeopathy.

Ah, right. So ‘Lucky Heather’ is a load of tosh too then.

😈

Stolen from the interwebs:

“These foods should be cooked to fully utlize nutritional content, to avoid small quanities of naturally occuring toxins, and for taste reasons:

Raw olives contain an extremely bitter substance called oleuropein. They are inedible to all but the most stubborn raw foodists. Brining olives removes the oleuropein, as does pressing them into oil.

Raw eggplant contains the toxin solamine. Most of the nightshade family contain toxins in at least one part of the plan, but eggplants are noted for a high toxin quantity in the fruit. Solamine wont kill you, but it wont help you either. More importantly, eggplant should be salted, pressed and cooked in order to obtain a desirable flavor and texture.

Many raw mushrooms contain trace amounts of toxins that break down when cooked. Of course it depends on the variety of mushrooms and those standard, supermaket whitecaps are fairly benign. Again, cooking is also desirable for taste reasons.

Raw high fiber greens such as spinach and kale contain few bioavailable nutrients. The complex fibers are simply too difficult for your digestive system to break down unless you chew each bite 50 times. It’s not going to hurt you, but you’re not going to benefit from all of the naturally occuring nutrients. Greens also taste better cooked, especially in a bit of pork fat.

Cooking food was one of the most crucial developments in human evolution as it allowed us to eliminate naturally occuring toxins and break down nutrients so they are easier to absorb.

Why some raw foodists feel the need to transcend out physiology is beyond me.”

[cynic]The Raw Food diet might be a good idea with a sound basis.

Or it might just be another fad for attention-whores to whang on about, seeing as Vegetablism’s now a bit too common and no longer attracts the same interest.[/cynic]

😉

Raw egg once gave me horrendous food poisoning.
And I don’t like my meat rare.
And raw rice would be a git to chew.

Is there a specific variety of lucky heather, or is it just because it’s been handled by a gypsy that makes it lucky?

Do gypsies need to be involved in the full end-to-end cycle of planting, growing & harvesting?

Or is it sufficient for them to buy a load of standard unlucky heather?

I just want to know so I can correctly authenticate any heather I am offered.