They’re just android phones with a stupid skin that makes them look like an iPhone. It’s only skin deep – things like in the settings menu, half the settings don’t work, and obviously the apps won’t be the iPhone apps (not to mention some of them like the fake siri being in Chinese). They’re also quite expensive.

If you want a cheap and pretty rubbish chinese phone (which you probably don’t unless you’re actually in China to play with it in person), there are loads of chinese android phones out there, no point spending extra for one that looks like an iPhone.

I’ve got a monster big North Face duffel bag one. It is okay, but any time you want to take it away from a car or van it is a pain to deal with. You can drag them around, but they end up with big holes in where they catch on things – mine lasted one long trip (about 6 months total) then died.

Unless you have something oddly shaped so need the particular shape of bag, and never go any further than about 100m from a car, I’d go for a rucksack or suitcase every time.

I’ve been through a number and to be honest found any device that relied on ear buds and a perfect seal inside your ear was worse than useless. Worse than useless because now I had a whole new distraction to stop and fiddle with as the music drops in and out constantly.

I’ve been doing some underwater + headphones stuff at work. Once you get the hang of putting the headphones in your ears and possibly get ones that are the right size and shape for your ears, they can work okay. But I’d agree that they are a pain to set up, and a fiddle, particularly when you first get them, and if I was in the market for an mp3 player only, I’d get something that did bone conduction. Sound quality underwater is pretty much going to be rubbish whatever you get, and it is surprising how much noise swimming even quite slow and smooth crawl makes.

But personally I think the whole experience of swimming with music is not that nice, I feel that it’s better to get interested in the swimming by doing productive training things like intervals, messing with pacing, doing drills, rather than using music to avoid having to think about swimming and becoming a pool robot or whatever you like to call it. It’s all about technique and feel for the water after all not just fitness, and not paying attention to your technique is surely going to lead to bad habits unless you’re already perfect, or at best no real improvement?

I think if your swimming is so monotonous that you need music to do it, then you’re probably not training right. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t do the kind of 2-3km training sets we do at our club on Sunday nights with music – on a good set I don’t have any spare concentration to listen to music with. Even training for an actual long event, like a 10k, I’d be mixing things up during training rather than resorting to mp3 players (although maybe I’ll think differently after June’s planned 14km swim!)

Does it only go to the neighbour, or does it also go on to other neighbours? That makes a difference in terms of who is responsible for it I think, water company or neighbour.

Whatever, If it isn’t your drain, and it is clear that it has caused the damage to your house due to failure to maintain it, then someone is responsible for it, and possibly for any damage caused by it. Assuming the neighbour (or his insurance company) hasn’t said he’ll pay you 10k straight away, you need to talk to a solicitor (potentially there may be specialists in building issues who would be better than your average high st one, I don’t know) and find out whether they think he is liable.

It is slightly better set up by default now, but even so, there is no right place for additional pay content as a key part of games aimed at kids, particularly small kids. They don’t know the value of money – there is no way any in game purcase is a meaningful transaction, it is just evil developers exploiting children’s lack of knowledge.

Clearly as a parent you should be careful with your password or whatever, but realistically, how many times have the 70 quid items in the smurf’s game really been bought with a parent’s permission. They know they are making money out of kids getting their parents password and not knowing the value of money, and they are proper scum for doing so.

The rubbish thing is that there isn’t anything necessarily wrong with in app purchases, things like buying extra levels have been around for years, from the days of Doom etc. But the exploitative way that phone apps for kids are doing it is inevitably going to lead to some kind of ridiculous legislation, because they are just taking the piss. Or alternatively it may end in a class action suit in the US where it may be deemed that all in app purchases made by kids have to be refunded or similar, at which point developers get buggered.

There’s also banking laws that at some point apple and google may fall foul of – by providing what are essentially financial services where in practice it is obvious that the target user is kids without their parents permission or knowledge.

And as for Apple’s control and restrictions – it isn’t what apps they let you run that is the problem, it is the purposes they let their payment system and the card details they hold to be used for. Whilst google let’s pretty much any app on android, I’m sure no one would think it okay if they let their payment system be used for extremely dodgy and deceptive things, hence them being far more careful about that. (not that google are any better in this case, android in app purchase happens too.

I floss pretty much every day now. Last time I went to the dentist he said I was in the top 5% of people if I did, which made me feel all proud!

Before I started flossing, every time I went to the dentist, I got five minutes of the high pitched tooth angle grinder thing, whereas if I do floss, the appointment takes no time. A small amount of time with the floss each day is quite satisfying, whereas 5 minutes of the angle-grinder is quite uncomfortable, even if it is just twice a year.

If you have trouble doing it, check out youtube for ‘how to floss your teeth’ videos, it is fiddly but once you have the hang of it you can do it pretty quick. Also, I find branded floss is better than non-branded cheap ones, cheap ones tend to fall apart in your mouth.

I worked in music related stuff (developing software), and met quite a few ex engineers – I would say that it’s more the sort of job people get out of at your age than into. Rubbish and unreliable pay, long late nights of work, if you do live sound it is a lot of travel, and if it’s like most areas of entertainment, quite likely very high car insurance premiums just in case you might put a celebrity in your car!

If you are one of the ten people in the UK who does interesting production work, sound engineering is probably a fun job, but otherwise it is a very poorly paid way of getting to listen to a load of crap indie bands on a repeated basis.

Never lived in the N Island, but I did work out in the South Island for some time a few years back. New Zealand is a long way from anywhere, so things that are imported are expensive. Food is expensive (although oddly, when I was there, eating out was dead cheap). Buying a house is very expensive, particularly in the ‘big’ cities. Obviously visiting people back home is also very expensive – don’t plan on doing it if you like to see the grandparents more than once every few years.

The trails that they have are good, but they don’t have a right of way system, which means that you don’t have the thing they have in the countryside here, where you’re always near a bridleway, it is more that you travel to particular places to ride – expect to spend a lot of time driving on infuriatingly slow roads to trails. For example, someone above posted that Rotorua is ‘close by’ to Auckland, which it is in New Zealand terms, but it is still going to be 3 hours driving each way, so a 6 hour driving mission for a day trip. It is only close by in the way that if you live in London, Cwmcarn in Wales is close by.

The no rights of way thing did get on my nerves a bit too – if you like doing journeys on your mountain bike at all, like going from place to place, you essentially can only do a few official tracks that exist, which are great, but it isn’t like you can think “I’ll ride off road from Wellington to Auckland” – most riding is in trail area type places.

About your wife, you need to know the details of the visa that you’d get, in terms of whether she’d be eligible for a spouse visa, hence able to work at all while you’re out there (assuming she doesn’t have one of their target skills). Work wise, it is a much much smaller place

My experience of it is that much of New Zealand is a lot like the less populated bits of Scotland* – they have a quite high quantity of mountains and things, and the trails are nice, but the whole place seems a bit backward and isolated and it is a pain to get anywhere else. In general it is a good thing, but it isn’t like here where I’m 2 hours by train away from a major city if I want culture, and where I have easy access to things like nice British and European cheese (it may be more important to me than you, but New Zealand bans the import of a lot of nice cheese), and am close to family if I need to see them. If you’re into culture, it is a bit of a pain – for example people I know into music over there are always having to fly or drive to Wellington to see bands, because any band touring only plays one of the big cities in New Zealand. Auckland is the biggest city, but bear in mind that it is only a bit bigger than Birmingham, so we’re not talking massive metropolis here.

I’m not saying don’t do it or anything, it’d be an adventure whatever, but I would say that a lot of people have an overly positive view of NZ, based on having holidays there, with every day free to drive long distances to ride, and money to spend on the vast number of very well organised tourist things to do.

Joe

*although they don’t have midges – they do have various kind of bastard man eating flies in many parts.

I went from 25m maximum at a go, to 7:30 for 400m with total immersion (just the book). So going from non crawl to medium/slow crawl swimmer, it can be good. I think at this point though, I’ve got better technique now from coaching at a local tri club, which is nice, but total immersion made a massive difference at the start, well worth the few quid for the book, and a great base for more training.

There is also swimsmooth, which a lot of people recommend – our tri club sessions are based on it. It is a similar type of drill based thing, but with a slightly different take on it, slightly more competitive focus.

I like the fact that people are posting on this thread using high powered, relatively tiny computing devices, and are still insisting that theoretical physics doesn’t serve any purpose.

Yes, even very theoretical things, that don’t appear to affect things on a real human scale have really quite practical benefits in the long term. I mean who could have predicted that many years in the future relativity would be a key part of getting people from A to B in their cars (GPS systems only work because of the designer’s understanding of special & general relativity).

Or who would have thought in the 1800s that philosophy of logic could at some point become the core thing supporting pretty much all business transactions (computer languages are essentially applied logic).

http://www.wildlifewatchingsupplies.co.uk/retail/acatalog/Infra-red_Trips_1.html

Could hack one together for a lot less though – it’s only an infrared beam plus a sensor and a relay

Default stay at home parent thing to make money is to make some kind of handmade tat and try to sell it to your rich friends. I presume hardly anyone makes decent money out of it though. I can only think of one person I know who does this on any meaningful scale, and she is a very good kids dressmaker, the quality is better than shop clothes and the price is roughly the same. I think unless you have a unique skill and can do it fast enough to make a lot of stuff, the market for homemade tat is very limited.

Oh and there are things like making cupcakes etc. Can’t be much money in it, cos round here, there is a new bespoke cupcake business popping up every week, and another old one going bust / quitting.

And ‘franchises’ – bet they make good money for the person selling the franchise, next to nothing for the person putting in the hard work.

Only obvious things where people are making money round here while looking after their kids too, are some of the baby groups. The good ones run by people who have particular skills, like swimming teaching (the posh baby swimming 15 quid a time ones, not local authority ones which are rubbish money), twistin tots (baby song and dance). They all seem like they’re run by people who have a real vocation for what they do, and are very skilled at it, rather than a money making scheme.

I guess it seems to me that the only obvious lesson is that the way to make money is not to think how can I make money, rather to think what are my skills, things that I realistically can do way better and more efficiently than most people, and what can I do to make money out of them. Any bugger can make a decent cupcake, which is why that is such a stupid idea, whereas very few people have the skills and qualificationsto teach swimming to babies, so if you do, that is a potential money spinner.

Are the lecture times etc fairly friendly for someone with kids of school age?

Depends on the course and the university. Lectures etc. at Nottingham can be as early as 9am, which isn’t too bad if school drop offs aren’t far from the university, but as late as 6pm finish which would be a pain. People do it, but they will have to rely on childcare sometimes.

Is ubuntu a viable alternative to Windows? Would be required to run commercial music software, video software… no messing around making things work…

No, you’d have to get used to different and not so good software for music and video. But then if you’re using commercial music software and video software, £70 for a windows licence is tiny compared to the cost of most decent music or video software.

According to http://www.tellows.co.uk/num/09830501760
It is a ‘premium rate service: sexual entertainment’

It doesn’t come up anywhere else on google, so it is unlikely that it is a common scam.

Unlikely, but just worth checking that they don’t have mobile phone handsets that are on BT that could potentially be running some dodgy software?

Do they have wireless phones that someone else could be using to call porno chat?

Does anyone else have access to the house, particularly anyone who comes and does work for them at weekends?

Or call forwarding set up in some way so that calls can be made remotely?

I would also go round all the extensions in their house checking what is plugged into them, anything other than the broadband router and phones, you want to unplug obviously. Check they haven’t left an old computer turned on with a modem plugged into the wall or something stupid like that.

Otherwise, there is surely no way that they can have made the calls when they were out, and they need to tell BT this and have the argument and hopefully get the money refunded.

Bah, humbug.

That isn’t moaning. If you want to hear me grumpy, wait till June, and then say “I bet you’re looking forward to your 2 month holiday”*. I’ve already had someone ask me if I’m enjoying my half term this week – even the students don’t get a half term break.

Joe
*In case anyone doesn’t know, no, academics don’t go away when the students go away. That is when people get the bulk of their research done.

I’ve known a few mature students, some of whom are now university lecturers/researchers, so certainly does work for some. I think they are more likely to be motivated by the subject, which is nice. You quite likely won’t have the full 18 year old university experience of spending 100% of the time pissed and not really working hard on the course, but on the other hand, you have the potential to get a lot more out of the academic side of things.

On the down side, if you have more distractions, things like kids, family, part time work to fund the course or whatever, you may find it harder than a carefree 18 year old and be more likely to drop out.

the difference in efficiency and the hours kept between the academic and commercial world – want to speak to a lecturer at 3pm on a Friday??? ha!

It’s not a lack of efficiency, it is that teaching you is only a part of their job, and being available in the office is no reflection on how good they are at their job as a whole. That’s why they tend to have defined things like office hours when they are at the beck and call of students, otherwise there would be no hiding, and you’d get no research done. Overall I’ve never met anyone who worked as hard as most academics do. They don’t sit in an office all day for no reason, but I find it is disturbing the number of emails about projects or check ins of code that you see happening at 1am in the morning on a Saturday. Whereas when I worked in companies, you were in the office all day, but far less work got done, and people could piss around completely most of the day and still get dragged along by their colleagues. What you’re mistaking for ‘efficiency’, is basically presenteeism – the idea that efficiency can be measured by the amount of time you spend sat in a particular place, as opposed to by what you get done.

If you are a proper hardcore audio nerd, you could use an external DAC for your headphones, to avoid the possibly low quality one in your smartphone. You basically need either an iPhone and an apple specific DAC, or an Android phone that supports “USB On The Go” and a USB DAC. Galaxy SIII with the latest update will support it apparently, probably most modern devices with up to date software.

Joe

Bear in mind that if you’re signed into your google account, google searches come up on your desktop too (https://www.google.com/history to get rid of those) I’m not sure if it shares browsing history between desktop and mobile or not though.

Next time you want to watch dodgy porn on your phone, you probably want to use incognito mode.

I left university part way through a .com boom, so loads of people were paid part in shares, although I don’t know anyone stupid enough to actually take a full payment in shares.

Never met anyone who actually made money from their shares – 99% of shares in small companies are worthless and can’t be sold.

You could be the person who painted Facebook’s offices, but you’re much more likely to be the person who painted one of the other 10,000 social media company offices at roughly the same time.

Unless you think the company is brilliant and a definite success story, then you just have to think of them as lottery tickets (except probably with way worse average return). If someone said they’d pay you in lottery tickets rather than money, would you do it?

If you really think you + him have a chance to make money, whereas him alone doesn’t, and you’re thinking of a long term thing, then you need to be thinking of it as a job (or as you starting a company with him), as opposed to a short term bit of work, and thinking differently to working as a temporary paid contractor.

I used something called Osmand~ on my android phone (the squiggle is important, for some idiot reason there are multiple versions of the thing) –

It comes from here.
https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=net.osmand.plus

It is free, you can pre-download whole states at a time onto your phone. Decent enough maps, and does turn by turn driving directions, all you need is a car charger for your phone.

There is a version on the play store, but it costs money (they are both the same thing with all the features, just this one is a slightly different build that is free).

It isn’t as good as copilot in terms of the clever stuff like lane guidance, but American road layouts are so simple that it isn’t a problem. The maps themselves seemed fine everywhere I was.

Joe, I think you’re a bit out of date.

So I am. Oops. Amazing how quick things change. Our Bluetooth HRM stuff is clearly at over a year well old out of date, and really does suck.

Surely if you decide what you’re willing to pay and bid that amount it doesn’t matter when you bid – you’d get the same result bidding in the 1st 5 seconds?

If you decide you’re willing to pay £20 for something, then bid £20 at the last minute, and it is still at £10, then you get it for a tenner and a bit. You bid £20 at the start, then someone dodgy bids it up to £20, retracts their bid, then bids 19.00, you pay £19. It is all very well being willing to pay £20, but you’d be silly to pay £20 for something which no one else is willing to pay more than £10 for, as it suggests that your valuation was way over the odds.

If you bid in the last second, then it essentially allows ebay to work in the way it theoretically should, where everyone just bids their maximum, and it goes to the highest bidder, rather than how it does in practice, where people are strongly influenced in how much they are willing to pay by the behaviour of others, and also where people manipulate the system against the rules but in a hard to prove manner to achieve a maximum price.

Oh, and gixen.com seems to work fine for me, decide your price when you see the item, put it in, it bids for you in the last second. No need to watch auctions or manually bid, you pay what you were willing to part with or less.

Bike trailer – have the croozer and it is brilliant. With the ‘baby sling’, you can easily take a six month old in in, and it is enclosed from the elements, so you can use it all year – we’ve used it in sub zero temperatures no problems. You could buy one today and use it this weekend. Lots of room for luggage too, things like nappies, shopping, snacks, picnics, spare clothes, raincots, toys, teddies, swimming stuff, it all just gets dumped in the back of the trailer. We’ve been camping with the tent and gear for the two of us in the back of the croozer even, that’s how big it is.

Bike seats mainly say from age 1, and in my one experience with a one year old in them i’d say that is probably about right.

Coming at it from a technical point of view, for a standalone device, bluetooth has no advantages – it is higher power, so batteries run down quicker, it is often fiddlier to connect, there are more likely to be many other bluetooth devices around you, ant deals with dropped connections in a nicer way, and it offers no better connection or accuracy. Oh, and it is more expensive to license and build.

At some point newer low power bluetooth standards will probably make ant obsolete, and it will become cheaper to implement Bluetooth, but right now the only reason for a bluetooth belt is to talk to a general purpose device like a phone.

Either that or at some point all radios in devices will be software defined meaning it’ll be trivial to support different wireless protocols, at which point phones may support ant or similar.

Good thing with the Decathlon helmets is that they are quite cheap, and come in smaller age ranges than a lot of kid helmets appear to. So you might have to buy two where one would work, but the one to cover both age ranges would start off as a gigantic heavy uncomfortable mushroom and cost twice as much.

Don’t buy super fancy ones that look like characters or whatever, we have a tiger one and it looks lovely, but was too heavy. Decathlon do nice lightweight ones, which she wears fine.

Bike seat from a year officially. Trailer with baby sling easily from six months and no need for a helmet, if you’ve got the money, ours is the best bit of baby kit we bought (a croozer), I still use it every week at 2 and a half.

You are unlucky, because on that particular phone the digitizer and the led are bonded very tightly together, so yu need a whole new screen. On most phones it is a ten pound fix if you haven’t broken the led disply itself.

Just how much can a map of the uk change in any century.

My mum has a brilliant map of the UK she drew in geography at her school. Where I live is labeled nots and Derby coal fields, where I was born is labeled Middlesex, etc etc. Apart from historical battlefields, it is mostly surprisingly out of date.

Cash converters used to be brilliant for old computer games and consoles, once the new ones had been out a few years. Other than that, where you can see it makes sense to chuck them out, it is hard to know what is niced in them. I have heard them called ‘stash converters’ in dodgy areas though, they don’t have a good reputation for sure.

but since December 2011 they switched off ther 2g signal in some areas and ever since reception has been really really bad, even though I have a mobile phone mast at the end of my street

Here it was similar. Their coverage estimate for the 3g clearly didn’t take into account that the town is on the side of a steep hill, the mast is up the top and across the other side slightly, so if you’re in the shadow of the hill, you have no coverage.

The good news for me is that once I explained to them that i’d checked my sim in 3 different phones, and also done a search for networks with another phone, and told them exactly where their coverage map was now wrong, they let me out of my contract, complete with an unlocked fancy phone after 5 months.

The key thing was that originally it worked fine at my home address, and then it stopped. Coverage while out is always going to be variable, but if they’ve sold you it based on coverage at your home address and then turn it off, it is a change in the service they are providing. The small print of the contract isn’t 100% clear, but in my case, once i’d convinced them it wasn’t a defective phone or sim (by trying multiple combintions, and by trying a network search on a different phone without a sim), and that it must be due to coverage changes on their part (I could tell them what mast they’d turned off), they just straight away said fine, here’s your code to change networks and let me out of the contract, was dead easy.

Speedos are well out of fashion, but feel nice to wear – lots of water against your skin.

Jammers are the current fashion – sort of like cycling shorts without the pad. Just as fast to swim in as speedos, or possibly slightly faster.

For brand I swear by speedo personally, I find they last really well (I still wear a speedo pair of speedos which are ancient, because they just won’t wear out!). I like their goggles too (soft fit ones, about a tenner), although there are certainly more fashionable brands of goggles if you care.

If you don’t want to join a club or get more lessons, swimsmooth or total immersion books, dvds etc can be qpite useful.

Although if you’ve got to a level of happily doing 8 minute 400s and tumble turns, you might find that you improve quickest with some coaching. Cheapest way to get coaching may well be a club. I’m a member of a triathlon club – I think tri club sessions are probably better than full on swim clubs if you’re not already quite good, although it depends on what your local club is like.

I was at a similar level last year. I found it made a big difference having an experienced coach look at my technique, I could do 7 minute 400s with a similar effort level to the8 minute ones.

Also, for real fishlike swimming, outdoor swimming is where it is at, check out the outdoor swimming society on the web [with a great map of swim spots) and facebook (for people to swim with). Once you’ve experienced a swim in 3 degree water, you’ll never want to go to the pool again.

Wait until 3 months exactly before your desired leaving date, then give notice. Only sensible way to avoid them finding some devious way to give you notice back for 3 months from that date. Stay in control of the process.

Everyone is terrified of being a parent for the first time even if it is planned. If you delay things, you just delay the fear.

Personally, I found the moment that she appeared, instincts kicked in, and it was okay.

Also, in the last week I have gone for 3 decent swim sessions, one in a lido (happened to be in London), one in the river, one pool training session plus been on the bike a bit, and that is a week when we’re both dead busy with work stuff. Oh, and gone ice skating with Rose (aged two and a half – an odd but fun experience), and I’m also hopefully heading off to a campsite this weekend with her (although we are cheating and staying in a ‘camping pod’).

But takes away the choice of other people to be part of an institution that they, the society around them, and their religion, views as a relationship solely between a man and a woman

Why do the rights of gay people trump the rights of religious people?

Why are a vocal minority of gay people so intolerant of the rights and beliefs of others?

That is ridiculous. You are conflating marriage as a state institution, vs a religious marriage. Even with an established state religion, there is still a big difference between a civil marriage vs a religious marriage. Otherwise we’d be a state that only allowed marriage in churches.

I’m married, but it has nothing to do with religion. Plenty of people are married in a way that has nothing to do with religion. The only way marriage has a meaningful connection with religion is if you have a religious marriage.

What this bill is primarily saying, is that gay people should be allowed to have civil marriages. Which seems fine, assuming we agree that our state is fundamentally in favour of equality of opportunity no matter what your sexual orientation is (which given the various treaties on the matter we have signed up to and laws which we have enacted, is pretty much undeniable).

The obvious corollary of allowing gay people to have civil marriages, is that there is no reason to ban religions marrying gay people, so religions should be allowed to decide if they wish to marry gay people. No one is forcing any religion to marry gay people.

I’m part time, 4 days a week work, 1 day a week at home. I also looked after Rose for 3 months when she was 9-12 months.

I seriously considered quitting work completely and being a full time parent, it is extremely good fun and very fulfilling. The only reason I didn’t was because I really quite like my work too, and it’d be sad to miss doing that.

I found Rose & I got a lot out of baby groups – things like Twistin Tots (insane baby disco), baby swimming (we did cheap local authority lessons for a few months, now I just take her / teach her myself at the pool’s parent and toddler session – there are fancy baby swimming lessons, but they are *very* expensive, like £13 a go), parent & toddler playtime groups, toy library, all that kind of stuff. It was fun to see her playing with other kids, or at least see them all in one place, so you can see how your kid fits in amongst the wide variety of different kids, and good to get some social contact / support with people going through similar things.

I think men have varying experiences of groups – I’ve met some men who really didn’t get on with baby groups and activities and all that stuff, because they were the only man there. I think whilst in some places women may be unfriendly, at least round here a lot of that is more about the men being shy than the women being unfriendly. Some people also moan that baby groups are just full of women going on about breastfeeding and birth experiences; while that is somewhat true for the first couple of months maybe, once your kid is 3 months or so, it is much less so, everyone is having the same problems and funny experiences looking after their kids whether they’re a bloke or a woman.

I think I did have a big advantage, because I knew a few people there already, because we’d been involved in things at weekends. And I guess my wife had warned some of them that I’d be taking over with Rose, so they were nice to me! It also helped that by the time I turned up at things, everyone knew Rose (she is quite distinctive, and it is a very small town!). If your wife is doing maternity leave before you take over, try and make sure she introduces you to people, then you won’t end up being the random person turning up at 6 months.

The other thing I did an awful lot of, both with other people and just us two, was bike rides and picnics. I don’t know if it’s because we indoctrinated her successfully in the very early months, or if it is natural, but there is nothing Rose likes more than being outside, particularly in the woods with the wind going through the trees. I got a bike trailer at 6 months, and used it as my main form of transport with Rose (still do now she is 2 and a half). She really really likes it, and also loves picnics so much. She is very jealous when she sees me making my packed lunch for work and putting sandwiches in my box, because she always thinks that my work must be a bit like having a picnic. Oh and going to the park, basically at least for me, with a baby who wasn’t really at the arts and crafts stage, I found it a million times easier to parent outside, even on snowy and rainy days.

As well as all that doing stuff advice, my only other piece of advice is that sometimes you’ll just have a day where it all goes wrong, you don’t get anywhere, the baby sleeps at the wrong time, wakes at the wrong time, you don’t get any meals cooked. The brilliant thing about being a full time parent is that it doesn’t really matter, and doesn’t really mean anything about you as a parent, happens to everyone. Just chalk that day up as a wasted day, buy chips for tea, and get on to tomorrow.

Oh, and something that worked for us, was slings, and a lot of wearing the baby on us. Means you can do stuff with them, like cooking or tidying up, plus they are great for walks in the countryside, or just quickly popping out to the shops. Some people don’t get on with them though.

Don’t stress at all about nappies and poo and sick, that is easy stuff, you get used to it very quick by the way.

That oxford Leco looks like what I could do with – my dad had one similar when I was a kid and I loved it, going low down on the handlebars on his road bike. Would be handy as a leave on the bike seat, for when I don’t have time to put the trailer on, or when I’m riding on somewhere else afterwards.

All the other front seats I’ve seen are no use on a road bike because they’re massive – has anyone tried the Leco on a road bike (I’ve got quite a relaxed touring type position, so I think there’s room for her, and it is an aluminium not super light frame – Trek 1200, so not particularly worried about any clamp damage).

In America it’s not uncommon for people to have a poo next to each other with no separation. Even in their mainstream airports there are big gaps in the cubicle doorways so people can look in and wave hello.

Is that really true? In the same America where people look at you funny if you wear speedos to swim in the sea rather than stupid baggy board shorts? Weird.

Joe

Isn’t it simple – don’t want to see people naked, go somewhere with indiidual changing cubicles, don’t care, join a gym with shared changing.

I think it is an age / parenthood thing – just wait ten years and you’ll not give a damn about who sees your bits in public either. If you think about it rationally, it is pretty weird of you to be so freaked out about seeing a cock – what exactly is it that you’re scared of?