To answer the original person – the wooden balance bikes have always seemed pretty rubbish to me; not really designed for riding, more a nice looking thing (like a lot of the trendy wooden toys really). I really rate our Strider Bike, which is a more bike-like balance bike, and really incredibly well designed – they’ve really thought everything through, all the details are just right, from the bar grips to the wheels, to the super-light frame, the nice bits to put your feet up on when scooting downhill, and the slightly odd but very practical braking system.

Although at that age, I’d maybe be thinking kids bike (and take cranks off if you want to).

I don’t rate balance bikes personally. They’re completely unnecessary.

My eldest never used one. We just took his stabilisers off one day and spent an hour with him helping him learn to ride on just two wheels.

A few bumps and grazes, but picked it up pretty quickly. I was quite surprised. Maybe he’s just naturally got good balance or something.

Anyhow, buying a balance bike for him would have been a huge waste of time and money.

I would suggest it’s a waste for anybody.

Parents just need to spend some time helping their kids ride a bike. You don’t need any special equipment.

Balance bikes are brilliant. I can’t understand why anyone would not get one. You’ve completely missed the point of them – what they do is allow for a painless way of learning 90% of the skills to ride a pedal bike. They also allow kids who are keen to bike, to ride really early too.

My 1 year old (okay 23 and a half months old) is happily riding half a mile down the hill to the park every day now, and riding back from childminders; today we went to the shops, along the bottom road to the park, and all the way back up our road, which must be a good mile and a half (and with a good few metres of ascent too). I bought it at 18 months because she kept going for other kids bikes in the park, and because with all the bike trailer rides she made it pretty clear she wanted a bike like daddy; it is one of her most treasured possessions – every morning and when we get home, she gets on it and starts riding it up to the door!

Anyway, enough boasting – I don’t think Rose is particularly skilled or special or an early developer – she only learnt to walk at 14 months or so, I think it is almost entirely to do with having access to a good balance bike and getting the chance to learn at this age. I know a bunch of biker friends who also got balance bikes early, and without exception, their kids are on pedal bikes at about 3 if not earlier (one friend was being taken for 5 mile mountain bike rides with his not quite 3 year old). Most of them didn’t even fall off when transitioning to the pedal bikes either.

It is all very well for people to say that their kids learnt to ride stabiliser-less bikes without them, of course they did; everyone did, but I bet it took blooming ages, and I bet they had some falls (or ‘a few bumps and grazes’, or had to waste ages riding around with stabilisers (and if they were anything like me, they almost certainly tipped over their stabiliser bike turning corners in a hurry!). Why not let them learn the main skills of riding a bike (the balance), on something where it is easy to fall off without bumping yourself.

So yeah, you don’t need a balance bike, but you do have a choice between:

a)Letting your child hurt themselves and bump themselves and graze themselves, and learn to ride at 5 or 6.

b)Letting your child learn to ride in pretty pain free manner, and learn to ride smoothly well before 2 and to pedal at 3.

I think the 80 quid or whatever you spend on a balance bike, is worth it for 3 more years of enjoying riding a bike. Particularly if you like riding bikes, and think that enjoying riding bikes is a good thing.

If you compare it to other things, our expensive (80 quid) balance bike is pretty cheap really, I mean right now the cost is well below £1.50 per ride, which is pretty cheap compared to other things she likes doing like swimming (£3.50 a go, or with membership and us going twice a week it works out at about £1.20 a go), soft play (£4 a go), ‘fun club’ (£3 a go), going out to the cafe for cake (£5 a go). In a couple of months time, it’ll be down to about 60p a ride.

ps: While I’m boasting, here are a couple of videos I did of Rose at bang on 23 months; this week she is scooting almost all the time with her legs up now, except for braking and speeding up.

Edit: Oh, actually, there is one extra cost to balance bikes that I forgot; our malt loaf bill has gone up significantly – that tiny midget there can get through half a loaf of soreen on a single trip to the woods (and I need the other half to power me up for keeping up with her).

choice- of course you have choice. You could enrol it/them in a nursery which will have trained experienced staff and an ofstead record (not report)

To be fair to childminders, the relationship you and your kids have with a childminder is completely different to that you have with a nursery – I think it’d be incredibly hard for childminders to get away with being abusive or just not very good, as it’d be really obvious, whereas it clearly is perfectly possible to get away with not being very good at all, or even quite horrible neglect or abuse in the larger nursery setting where parents don’t have direct contact with all staff.

Blooming heck, we had a play with one of those mini micros the other day and it was a complete piece of junk, I had no idea they cost fifty quid, thought it was a supermarket ten pound special.

They have stupid steering that steers by leaning, a bit like a skateboard, but without the big platform, which means that while you are learning to scoot they constantly turn towards the side that you have your foot down. it’s a stupid paranoid safety device that just makes them suck to ride.

I think that two wheeled scooters have proper steering, which whilst it makes it possible to drop them, also makes them something worth riding.

Presumably the kid is asking for a scooter specifically, otherwise a bike is obviously far better – possibly balance bike if they can’t ride one yet.

I have no idea because Im not a swimmer, but Mrs FD says correct technique is to only breath to one side, not alternate sides.

she’s wrong – pretty much all good swimmers breathe on both sides. Breathing on just one side is a recipe for an unbalanced stroke, which leaves you wasting effort correcting it if you want to go straight.

There are times when you want to breathe one side only, like if you’re sea swimming, you tend to breathe down wind, and if you’re in rapids you might want to do it only one way depending on how the currents are, but for normal swimming, both sides.

The original question, lots of people have covered it already, you say what you do wrong in the question itself – you should never be holding your breath, breathe out under water, then only breathe in when you turn your head to breathe. At swim coaching sessions I’m doing at the moment they tell us to think ‘bubble, bubble, breathe’, on each stroke, where you are breathing out for each ‘bubble’, and in on the ‘breathe’.

Menu button stuck on, or trackball?

other thing to try is have you got adb, and do you know how to use it – i’d try adb reboot, or adb reboot recovery and see what happened.

I used a boot cd (you burn it on your pc and boot off it) to root and turn security off on my desire. I’m not sure but I think it did everything from the pc, I don’t remember having to use those fiddly menus at all. I ¨hink I reflashed my rom at the same time.

I can’t quite remember the name of the cd, but it has a picture of the joker from batman on it – maybe unrevoked or revolution or revolutionary.

You are all officially fairweather fairies. My one year old daughter is less of a wuss than you lot! We went to swimming with the bike trailer as normal, it was fun – one point I had to pedal whilst heading downhill with 30 kg of trailer and child because the wind was so hard.

I must admit though, I might try and talk her out of her evening balance bike ride, although I dunno how succesfull I’ll be, she’s been out every evening for at least the last week. Thank goodness for my big goretexcoat!

Two different things to think about here –

1)kid accidental/y stumbling on porn etc.

For example, I know someone who wanted to watch some adorable kitten videos and searched youtube for cute pussies.

that is what safefearch in google is for.

2) Deliberate porn downloading.

You can’t stop it with a technological solution – there are so many simple and easy to use ways around it, and remember, assuming your kid goes to school, the problem of bypasssing your controls is essentially crowd sourced, you are basically battling all the kids. and their 16 year old oldr siblings, and I’m pretty sure that few people know more about bypassing porn filters than 16 year olds.

One compromise position that I know some people do is to just log all sites accessed on their wifi router, and tell the kids that they do that – just means that at least at home it is easiest for their kids only to use sites they’d be happy for their parents to know about.

I’m often surprised at how many people are completely powerless with technology.

for example phones – I’ve repaired a bunch of phone things, like charger sockets going wrong, screens etc. All that required was a couple of screwdrivers and an internet connection for the youtube videos showing how. for things I can’t do, I at least am able to work out how to get it fixed. wheras I’ve met people who were going to do crazy things like chuck out 500 quid iphones because they’d cracked the glass.

And laptops – number of people who’ve chucked laptops because they got viruses or the hard disk was full is shocking.it’ll be worse now macs have viruses, because they attract exactly this type of anti knowledge type in large numbers nowadays.

They have a big network of sensors all round the track / ride. If any of them play up, the ride halts and doesn’t let anything go. Can be a broken sensor, or a random electrical glitch or whatever. Most often they just reboot the ride and the glitch goes away, and they have to run the ride empty once to check it is okay. If the sensor still shows something doesn’t go away, someone needs to climb up and look at the sensor and check the bit of the ride it is monitoring, which delays things for longer

Worst I’ve seen was the press launch for Saw at Thorpe Park, where it broke down with a bunch of celebrities at the bottom of the lift hill, half way round the ride, leaving them stuck there for ages. Ouch. There were some extremely worried men in boilersuits there. Although they got acres of coverage from that one, so I guess PR people win whatever happens.

We did some work on the PR launch for the Nemesis Sub Terra (with my “thrill scientist” hat on), I’ve ridden it about 10 times. It is one of those rides that you don’t want to know about before you do it.

Joe

C)Go to a wetsuit shop now.

seriously, cheap wetsuits are fine, and not that expensive.

Otherwise, more clothes not less, and all artificial fibres (fleeces, bike/walking tops etc) as you’ll surely warm up quicker in those.

Although having said that, unless you have somewhere to stow clothes while you paddle, don’t go overboard on the layers, kayaking is pretty hard work, and it’s a pretty mild air temp.

I’ve known foreign students who drove, I think on uk licences.

http://m.direct.gov.uk/syndicationController?action=view&param=DG_4022561&utn=def27bc8142746b49404201204172006

you can apply for licence then theory\practical tests after 6 months in the uk as a student according to the above..

If you are married your property is jointly owned

Not since 1870 surely

Anyone else end up with lots of pool water in their mouth? If not actually swallowing it.

Are you constantly breathing out except when you’re taking the in breath?, swallowing lots can often be a sign of stopping breathing at some point, which is generally not a good thing,

Also, even if your figures are right, you wouldn’t even break even and get your 15k for 3-4 years, even if you we’re super lucky and had no major repair bills, no gaps in tenancy etc. If you found anything bad while renovating or had bad luck with tenants or repairs, you’d potentially be looking at 8-10 years before you even got your initial investment back.

Are you a professional developer with trade contacts to get the work done cheaply, time to do a lot of the work yourself, and the knowledge to accurately estimate renovation costs?

if not, your 15k is probably 30k once you find out what actually needs doing. It’d also be a complete waste of money – unless you are in the trade and doing much of the work yourself, you very rarely increase value by the amount works cost, particularly when the cost is 15% of the value of the house. Financially, doing up houses is for suckers unless. it is for you aand you watn a particular house to live in yourself for some reason, or you can’t afford a mortgage on a house in good enough condition in the area you want to live in.

I count 123 with the stroke on the first length, 2 2 3 on the second, etc. obviously breathing both sides on a 3 count, which you want to do if you don’t already.

Don’t just do massive long swims with no pauses either – do intervals or other things that will make you faster. Just plodding up the pool for ages doesn’t make you get any faster and is a really bad way to train.

Oh and unless you’re super good already (you might well be if you bother doing tumble turns), work on technique with something like the drills described on the swimsmooth website, or the total immersion books, technique makes way more difference to swimming speed than fitness and has massive advantages in triathlon as it potentially leaves you less knackered after the swim.

When I was a kid 20 years back, everyone used to go to chertsey park to ride the jumps and berms and stuff there, sort of unofficial but tolerated jump spot. Every so often at that kind of place some busybody would come and moan at you, but it didn’t stop anyone riding or building. That was on 10 speeds, girls bikes etc. I guess some kids have fancier bikes, but I dunno how much has really changed except for the size of the jumps?

I’ve got a croozer trailer, it’s brilliant – rolls nice and smoothly, keeps her nice and warm (we’ve ridden with it in subzero temps), and motorists give you a massive wide gap when overtaking as it is so much more obvious than a seat. oh and loads of toys can travel too – quite often I find that teddy or rabbit or someone has hitched a lift and Rose is pointing everything out to them.

get it early and get the kid hooked early – with the baby sling bit in the croozer, we’ve been happily going for decent length (up to forty mile) rides since six months, and now she is almost two she is always asking for bike trailer, and obsessed with her balance bike too.

I’ve been camping with mine too, brilliant fun, just the two of us and my hiking tent.

Oh and great for shopping too – massive boot to bung things in, I even carried her bike and a decent load of shopping the other day and it was fine to tow (bottom gear up the big hill mind, but this is derbyshire!)

Catch 22, isn’t it. No unit sales = no apps, no apps = no unit sales.

Partly that, but also a problem of making it a pain to develop for, and needing to jump through hoops to code for it and to release apps.

iPhone and Android both have lovely modern operating systems that are easy to write apps for, and apps have really taken off. Same with Symbian, it was the most horrible piece of junk to develop for, and nokia made it worse by making it a real expensive pain to release apps publicly for, so no developer with half a brain would ever write anything for it, so it went boom.

Apple have the pain that is approval, but they seem to have got away with that, partly by making it dead easy to do and partly just due to the perceived higher profits to be made from users of such incredibly expensive phones.

My bikes are not very expensive, but I did have a bike nicked recently from the shed (300 quid halfords bike!) I now have an alarm (pir sensor) that rings in the house. 30 quid off ebay, and because the souder unit is inside, there’s not much you can do to stop it. wireless, with a battery in the pir, and a power supply for the receiver unit.

The only downside is that if you forget to turn it off when you go in, it is very annoying for whoever is in the house!

I have a problem with any and every organisation that promotes the countryside as some form of extension of a municipal park – the countryside is a working resource,

Not commenting on the rights and wrongss, but what ‘work’ exactly does the New Forest do other than tourism? Is there really any work done there that is anywhere near as important* as providing a playground for people, and the obvious conservation work that goes into keeping that playground as nice and natural as possible?

joe
* in terms of numbers of people involved, the amount of money involved etc?

we have a strider for Rose. she got it at about 17 months and fitted on it then (she is slightly below average)

I don’t think you could possibly get lower without smaller wheels.

She’s just starting to really scoot now at 20 months which is exciting.

Joe
ps. she loved the videos, sat there shouting ‘boy’ ‘bike’ all the way through!

Wonder how many electronic engineers there are here with some of the guff that’s being spouted. Cables do make a difference, whether a £1k cable is a significant (or any) improvement over a £40 cable is another matter. Also, the cable part of the transmission line is only one element, just as important are the connectors. For real quality you need impedance balanced termination. AFAIK Linn are the only major consumer hifi company that make this kind of stuff and they are correspondingly expensive. In my lab we use cables that are as short as possible and terminated with 50 ohm connectors, some of these can be >£1k for a 10cm semi-rigid. Sometimes, you get what you pay for…

we also use silly expensive cables in our lab (in ekg, eeg and related medical grade things). They cost that because they have to deal accurately with tiny signals and/or extremely high frequencies, not the relatively decent level and low frequencies of audio signals. To make a cable that wasn’t fine at audio frequencies,you’d have to really try hard.

Oh and on the studio front, a lot of studio places I’ve seen also hand make their cables, usually in a hurry, cutting things with any old knife that comes to hand and using any old cheap metal jack plugs, no fancy connectors, and certainly no ‘impedance balancing’.

There’s one main footpath through it, from the canal just out of Ambergate. Most of the trails all come off that – a bit hard to describe but dead easy to find riding there.

Probably a bit muddy at the moment though, usually best in summer or when frosty.

If they are unhelpful I would contact the local press before taking the legal route. Most companies don’t like bad press especially if it involves them fencing stolen goods

I wouldn’t. i’d give them a chance to pay up, but if they weren’t going to, i’d go straight onto the legal process, much more likely to get quick results and actual money as opposed to promises of money.

Small claims is cheap and dead easy, so if the dealer won’t refund you in full immediately, start small claims without any delay. the quicker you get things started. the quicker you get your money back.

google diy justice, or which guides to small claims.

if you get a small claim judgement against a dealer, you can send high court enforcement round to take carsaway and auction them to cover the money you’re owed plus court costs etc. when I did this against a bunch of scumbags (hello derby car centre), the moment enforcement got there they paid in cash to avoid having their cars taken!

it really is very easy to do. I had to risk 200 quid total, but got it back along with two and a half grand I was owed!

don’t piss around with anyone other than the person who sold you the car – they are who has to refund you.

Print out the terms and conditions – in disputes, things on websites can go missing.

what I would do is write to them explaining that as in your previous letter, you have cancelled, due to the change in facilities, and tell them to stop the debt collection action. tell them to reply within 14 days to let you know that they have done this.

That way, they have to justify why they think you owe them money, and also they can’t claim that they couldn’t contact you, or serve court papers to an old address or whatever.

debt collectors can find your address anyway, so I wouldn’t worry about letting out your address

oh and don’t bother with c.a.b., what you want is consumer direct 08454 04 05 06, they will know exactly what to do / write, and you don’t need to mess with appointments or all that.

I’ve got an electric one that goes off in the house. Small PIR unit that you stick in the shed, and (mains powered) receiver unit in the house.

No idea how long the PIR battery lasts for yet – they claim a year, even if it’s only 6 months really, that isn’t too bad, I only put it in yesterday (after my bike* was nicked from there, hmph).

It makes a blooming loud noise in the house so I certainly will hear it if I’m in. I can’t get into the shed at all without setting it off either, I tried quite hard yesterday. Range seems quite good – works even through our big thick old house walls, plus all of an extension, and 50 foot of garden.

It is this one
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DRIVEWAY-ALERT-WEATHERPROOF-ALARM-PROTECT-GARAGE-SHED-/250721699095?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item3a602d8517#ht_4120wt_952
I think the same as this one
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/A9-WIRELESS-WEATHERPROOF-GARDEN-DRIVEWAY-GARAGE-OUTBUILDING-BURGLAR-ALERT-ALARM-/250993477419?pt=UK_Burglar_Alarms&var=&hash=item80142625a2#ht_3448wt_952

I’ve also stuck an alarmed padlock on my bikes, which is jolly loud and goes off if you move it at all, as I thought it’d be good to let any thieves know that there was an alarm as well as letting me know that they were there.

Joe

*fortunately only the cheap halfords one rather than the commuter

You can diy something like that for not much – google diy steadicam.

They can produce okay results, like proper steadicams there is a skill to using them, particularly while moving.

How long does the drive take and how hilly is it? Have you actually tried riding it on a proper road bike ever?

Just saying because my commute is longer than that and pretty hilly, I was surprised to find that there is very little difference in time driving vs car. As for showers, shower at work instead of home doesn’t take any extra time.

There is a foot brake kit for the strider.

To be honest though, i’ve seen a bunch of kids on balance bikes round here and rarely seen a brake, and we’re in hilly Derbyshire. I think most kids only really need a brake once they have pedals. being light weight will make way more of a difference.

Rose loves her Strider, i’m really pleased with it.

It is super light, even at 21 months she can pick it up if she drops it.

she is happily wandering around with it, did her first circumnavigation of the sofa last week, and the length of the garden in a straight line.

It goes very low – she was fitting on it at 18 months, and is average height.

the sort of bell it comes with is rubbish. broken two so far – does anyone know of a small all metal bell, with no plastic parts that break when the bike is dropped?

To the 1000 miles guy, 1000 miles at 40mpg = about 40 quid difference from 1.00 to 1.40

if that makes a big difference, surely a business is hardly profitable if 40 quid a month makes a difference.

Not single,but because wife teaches (university) , in term time I have to do a fair few pickups and things. I’m part time, and flexible working, I often leave work at four, but catch up with emails or writing things later, I think work get a good deal from me, but I am able to do my fair share and look after the daughter. I work four days. One day off a week is a brilliant thing if you can swing it. My take home pay dropped about 16 or 17%, but it’s totally worth it.

If you pick up at 1815, presumably kid will have had dinner, so a 7pm bed time doesn’t seem too unlikely and that’s only half an hour difference, ours has half an hour or more difference in bed time depending on how tired she is.

I’ve got a shimano hub on my commuter and never had any problems on long rides with 23mm race tyres. Never heard of the problem before either.

Our macs have a magic mouse in the drawer unused,and Microsoft ones (explorer I think) actually attached.

Ever since the stupid imac Puck,mac mice have looked great, but never been as good as Microsoft or Logitech ones to actually use as a mouse.

Nice one.

I’m a slow but relaxed swimmer myself – I can pootle along at 8 minutes pace for ever (7 50 something actually!), but I’ve not got the technique / energy to go much faster for very long. A good open turn is next on my list.

I have done an awful lot of outdoor swimming though, and I’d recommend at least being able to breathe every 2nd stroke well on both sides – then you can choose to breathe away from the wind or waves, which make a big difference in anything big, if you’re a surfer, it isn’t like you’ll ever swim in small waves anyway.

If it’s like normal lifeguard, the 8 minutes pool time is really just a catch all to avoid unfit people wasting their time on the course (no one wants an unfit lifeguard for obvious reasons).

Joe

We found that ‘slightly higher’ insurance for flood plain and listed was more like multiple thousand pounds – get some actual quotes for the right address where you have ticked both the boxes. We had quotes well over 3000 quid from some people, compared to 300 quid that we actually got without flood risk.