Stanfords have all the types of maps that I saw out there and more, even has online samples of bits of map.

http://www.stanfords.co.uk/go/italy/walking/

Tabacco 1:25,000 maps are okay – tracks that are marked on them tend to exist (although they don't always mark all tracks).

Kompass do 1:50,000 maps of the Italian alps too, although not as detailed / good as the 1:25,000 maps.

I didn't see any other useful 1:50,000 maps.

Joe

The best recovery drinks are a mixture of protein and carbohydrates. You can buy expensive things from sports shops (protein recovery drinks etc.). Or you can buy cheap chocolate milk from a corner shop, which has been shown to be more effective than commercial recovery drinks, is easy to get hold of, and is cheap.

Joe

If you go to network selection on your phone, and set it to 'manual' rather than automatic network selection, then you can see what networks it is able to pick up inside your house. That way you can work out who to switch to. There are very few places except complete wilderness and underground where you can't get signal on any network, and I'd be pretty surprised if there are any in London.

I've played with one a bit.

It was okay.

A bit funny to type on – more like point and press on a big keyboard – doesn't feel clever like the iphone keyboard. I could only really type quickly with a table to rest it on so i could use both hands.

You have to be dead careful about clean hands – it isn't like a laptop where you can eat a sandwich and play on it as the screen gets mucky really quick. This one had been played with by a good few people and it was really smudged.

It looks quite nice, although is way heavier than it looks which is odd.

I wouldn't want one as i already have a light laptop that i can use on the sofa, and use more than just a web browser on it, but i can see why some people might like having a very expensive and shiny web browsing tablet, and it performs that function quite well, although the screen angle is weird for typing if you're sitting back.

Joe

I have to say I've got the opposite view. I've had experience of going to mediums a couple of times, and am pretty convinced that death isn't the end of the journey.

Okay, you might feel that, but can you name one thing that they did that couldn't be done by a fraudster doing cold reading?

She must have bumped into other neighbours or met people that know the lads – he was totally freaked out by the cash in the wallet, i said its total coincidence, if it had been £30 you would have gone "my go i only need to find a tenner now" etc and yes the gun license is up soon but again 'just' coincidence.

If she is at all good at cold reading, then she wouldn't need to – there is nothing in what they report that she couldn't have guessed on the spot, even if she did it exactly as they suggest (more likely, with the names, she got them with some prompting from them, although they are such common names – she could have guessed they would know someone called Roger who was dead).

The 'has he ever had a injury to his face' question is the real giveaway though, it is one of those questions that to the person being tricked, seems very personal and to imply that the person knows an awful lot about them, but that actually 99% of people would answer yes to.

Quite a good description of cold reading here – http://www.wikihow.com/Cold-Read (there are tons of books about it – any magic shop will have one).

The thing is what does this woman get out of it, i mean she is bascially taking the p*ss basically out of two sane (they were before this event) people.

Some people are just good enough at this that they really believe that they have a magical gift of talking to the dead, and just enjoy the attention / feel they need to let people make use of their gift. Some people want to con people out of money, or are just weirdos. Some people are somewhere in between the two.

Joe

p.s. As well as betting that you live somewhere near Cardiff (and so does your mate?), did you have an accident as a child involving water?

I've met people who do this kind of thing as magic. It is very effective, and surprisingly simple once you see what they're up to. A surprising number of people will not believe it is trickery, even when they are told that it is.

Basically, what you don't get in those reports from gullible people, is all the fishing questions where she didn't hit gold and switched questions.

As for working down the docks – Using my mind-reading skills, I bet the person lives in Cardiff or somewhere near it with a big port, where 90% of old people will have spent some time working the docks. Or maybe Liverpool or Hull.

Other things like injuries to the face, who hasn't? And even if you haven't had a facial injury, she can goal switch and tell you that the spirit is warning you to be careful.

Joe

I'm sure they've got plenty for hybrid bikes up to ~40mm. That'll do for emergencies!

Be careful if you're using a 2.1" or similar width tyre – I've had a couple of 40mm tubes go pop when inflated inside a 2.1" tyre. It just does it sometimes either when you are pumping it up, or a few minutes later when you're riding along. Much better to use a 26×2.1" tube and stretch it over the wheel, rather than a 700x40mm.

Joe

Joe – I was wondering about the slim, as I don't have a lot of seat tube out and the saddle tyre clearance could be a bit tight. Does the extra width get in the way of your legs when pedalling at all ?

If I sort of lean backwards, whilst standing in the saddle, I can just about make my legs touch it if I try, but I've never hit it by accident.

Joe

now, if you tranfer that time taken to how long it would take for phones to be any good for navigational aid in remote areas it might be a while before anything decent arrives on the market.

Old Nokias since before the N95 have been good for navigation for ages, with Viewranger software it is great for getting around – I use it all the time – I rarely get the map out of the bag any more. And they have alright battery life (like 7 hours of GPS on).

Viewranger is now on iphone and android. I imagine it is better on android because you can swap over the battery if it gets low, and can run the app in the background. HTC phones I believe have generally better battery life than the iPhone when running GPS apps. The HTC phones also have very good GPS units (way more accurate than my N95 or the iPhone 3G I've used at work).

Joe

There's a base jumping guy in the USA who did it on a unicycle, although I don't know if he ever managed to ride out, I only saw videos of the first couple of tries, where he rode off the cliff fine, but crashed the unicycle on landing.

Joe

I have an SQR slim, and it is great. Needed the width / flatness for work stuff, otherwise I'd have one of the other two with the outside pockets which I'm guessing are great too.

Joe

Strictly speaking someone (you, or them) will not be using a legally licensed version of the OS.

Practically speaking, if something goes wrong and you need to reinstall, you'll be buggered and need to buy a new copy of the OS or pirate it off someone else.

If you're looking at old macs, make sure you don't buy a G4 one (or a G3 laptop), only the Intel ones are worth having.

Joe

CRIKEY! I'd used a polar S720i HRm with barometric altimeter which generally isn't too bad on the gain thing! Anyone else got some elevation data from the ride??? linky here for previous conversations:

If anyone has a GPS track of the course, then load one of the tracks into http://www.bikehike.co.uk and it will give you a vaguely accurate climbing / descending measure, based on the actual elevation data, rather than very innaccurate measures based on GPS altitude, which can be way off.

I thought I heard it was roughly 3500m of climbing last year.

Joe

I just got a hire quote for those plastic packing crates for about 10 days and it came to £350! WTF!

We got a house full of stuff packed into boxes provided by the removal company for less than £200 extra.

Unless you're absolutely skint, it is absolutely worth getting a removal company in and getting them to do the packing – you don't have to do anything much until the day of the move.

Obviously if you're doing it yourself in hire van or something, you might save a fair bit over getting removals in, but if you have enough that you are already paying someone else to drive vans for you, the extra they charge for packing makes moving so much easier.

Joe

tried one of these at inter bike a coupler years ago. imo it would be awkward to use off road, shit, it was awkward to use in the demo area!

You get used to it with a little practice – at least you do on the unicycle, and that is fixed gear with forward backward balance control being done through the pedals, which I'm guessing is a lot harder to shift than the standard bottom bracket version.

Joe

That one only has square taper cranks, and gears down not up – I think people mainly use them on road / touring / folding bikes.

They are making a 'freeride' version, which lets you use a small chainring, and gears up:

http://www.seed-your-ideas.com/Triebwerk/en/index.html

They are made by a very nice man called Florian who lives in Switzerland. He makes things to very high standards, which are pretty reliable, but they aren't cheap, and if anything goes wrong, it is a long time to get a fix. I have one of his unicycle hubs, and it has gone back to Switzerland once.

Joe

fancy doing it again in couple of weeks joe?

Would love to, but first baby is due next Wednesday, so probably not!

Have also plotted a related route that takes in almost all of the best legal trails I know in the White Peak. It is quite long, but would be ace to do some time once I am less baby busy and have about 15 hours in a day to spare (so I'm probably looking at 16 years in the future!).

http://www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?lnk=http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~jqm/White_Peak_Long.gpx

Thinking about it, the v-graphics people really ought to do a book of long rides, they are good rides, but you always end up having to link a load of them up to get a decent ride, and long rides are always the ones where you end up riding trails that are unknown to you.

Joe

Cheers for the route advice. In the end I overslept and due to time constraints (started at 11ish!) and being bloody slow, only managed 43 miles of the route, did a (quite nice – bermed and loose) shortcut from Priestwood across to Miller's Dale, and skipped the bit where I was going to go up and do the golf course descent in Bakewell. Still, a fantastic 7.5 hours of riding, and so many good trails – Baslow Edge, the rocky bit from Longstone Edge down to Rowland, the crazy steps at Monsal Head, the Northwood / Copywood singletrack, the insane climb out of Monsal Dale and the great fun climb up Back Lane in Darley Dale. I don't think I've ever done a ride with that quantity of fantastic riding in it, or with so much variation in riding – everything from wooded singletrack to lovely rocky stuff.

Joe

I have a feeling that imovie might not support AVCHD natively, or something funny like that. I know when we looked at it (end of last year), Apple Final Cut Pro didn't play nicely with our AVC HD cameras.

We solved it by buying Premiere, which is fantastic, but that was a lot of money, I'm sure there is a cheaper solution.

Joe

yes, in Belper.

Is the addition legal or naughty? I'm not sure if I need any extra mind – 50 miles seems like quite a ride!

Joe

If it is anything like our head of department's PA (university), I imagine this kind of administrative role is much harder than you would think, and might involve a lot more responsibility than being a PA in the private sector. The difference between academia / education, and a standard PA, is that in academia, the PA is supporting someone whose focus is both on education (or research in a university), and also on the general running of the school, which in practice gets pretty much entirely done by the support staff. Whereas in a business, there is one clear focus, and the PA is basically a purely administrative person, looking after diaries, booking plane tickets etc. for someone who has the job of making the business run.

Now, if schools hired professional managers as heads, rather than teachers, then perhaps this would be different, although I'm betting they'd not be anywhere near as efficient as the combination of someone who has a clue about education in the actual leadership role, and a decent administrator.

Joe

I enjoy a ciggie after my swim. Did a mile in under 30 mins last night

Pah, I swum 3 miles in under 50 minutes a couple of weeks back*.

Joe

* Okay, it was downstream in a very fast white water river, maybe that is cheating.

Ecotricity are great. Same price as the competitors, but it is possibly a bit more environmentally friendly, and as a bonus, the customer service phone lines go to a person, not a computer system.

Joe

Yeah, vorb or trademe for 2nd hand bikes. Also there are cash converters shops, which at least in Christchurch had some nice bikes, although like here, there is a chance that any 2nd hand bikes at cash converters are nicked.

There were loads of decent 2nd hand bikes in Christchurch, I imagine the same is true of other bigger towns like Wellington & Auckland.

Joe

Paying someone to pack really is worth it. Saves you days of work – they just come on the day and sort it all out. 150 quid well spent – I'd never do it myself again.

Joe

cocacola world and the aquarium and you have seen all of Altantas "highlights". The Olympic park has to be the worst leagcy of an olypmics ever.

We went to the smoky mountains, swam in Lake Chatuge. Oh and to the Chattahoochee River, where I filmed a stupid video of where I went swimming. Oh yeah and ran up and down stone mountain, which according to locals is the biggest granite outcrop in the world (it isn't the biggest rocky outcrop, and it isn't made out of granite, but other than that it is nice).

so if you have travel insurance and you get delayed and have to stay longer does it cover you for the rest of this time or do you have to arrange an extension?

EU law states that the airlines have to pay for hotel & food. No one knows if that is going to happen, but that is for work and BA to argue about.

Joe

Chocolate milk has been shown in tests to be just as good as expensive recovery drinks. They're 50p or so at supermarkets, or you can buy big cheap bottles that'll last a few days.

Joe

I'm stuck in atlanta which is a pretty generic us city. Booked on flight tomorrow but that looks like being cancelled. Wife 37 weeks pregnant. The whole thing is not good.

Getting sick of terribly unhealthy US food.

Although on the plus side there are worse places to be stuck than in a nice hotel with a rooftop swimming pool.

Joe

I'm stuck in atlanta which is a pretty generic us city. Booked on flight tomorrow but that looks like being cancelled. Wife 37 weeks pregnant. The whole thing is not good.

Joe

I don't know how good they are, but one of my colleagues plays in a soul band based in Chesterfield who do weddings and stuff:
http://www.upsidemusic.co.uk/

Depends a lot on how hurting she is now surely.

If she still feels broken, then her body is probably telling her it is a bad idea.

If she feels okay, then she may be the sort of superhuman idiot who can run marathons two weekends in a row.

Joe

If you have two laptops both with wifi, you can set up internet connection sharing over it, like this:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/expert/bowman_02april08.mspx

But it will be a pain.

3g dongles are pretty good, and you can get pay as you go ones nowadays, but be aware that you can't download too much video, so be very certain that your mate is not a big video pirate / bittorrent fiend before you offer to share 3g with him.

Joe

Fill the hole with environmentalists who think human output is more significant than what nature can produce?

What like volcanologists?
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/planes-or-volcano/

Perhaps fill it with anti-environmentalist nutters who think that nothing we do has any impact on the world. Probably the same blindly short termist pro-business types who were fighting the good fight on behalf of the tobacco companies before they lost that one, or fighting against pollution controls on factories, before we found all the dead / mutated fish etc.

Joe

I understand it's partly because you're likely to have famous / rich people in your car. At least that's what the tv presenter I worked with said – if you crash with a professional footballer or famous tv presenter in your car, and for some reason you are liable to them for loss of earnings or something, that could be zillions of pounds.

Joe

Most shops won't stock 29er size spokes, it's niche.

Are 29er spokes not in the range that road bikes use, it being the same size rim? Or are MTB hubs so much bigger that it makes a difference? I've never had any trouble getting hold of spokes for my 29er wheels.

Joe

I went for my first proper river swims of the year this week/weekend, and made a cheesy video of some of where I was swimming – although unfortunately I did discover that holding a video camera whilst swimming down grade 2 whitewater rapids is not the easiest thing to do!

Was a lovely swim – 3 miles of beautiful river*, snakes, turtles, pretty red birds, and some great fun rapids.

Joe

*just like the river in Deliverance!

I don't think stiffer boots are necessarily the solution – I get foot ache much more in scarpa mantas (insanely stiff), then in lightweight berghaus boots (only quite stiff), and not at all in trail running trainers.

Joe

I think the need for walking boots is over stated. After a lost luggage incident I spent 10 days walking in the Himalayas just in a good pair of running shoes (plus no sleeping bag, but that's a different story) and it was great, even in the snow

I'm a complete convert to walking shoes (those chunky trainer / approach shoe things).

Me too – I use trail running trainers for everything except winter walking (when you might need crampons or whatever). I have some very comfy summer boots (Berghaus something), and some not so comfy big clompy winter boots (Scarpa Manta), but I haven't used the summer boots for ages now.

I only do what I understand is pretty mild scrambling, Crib Goch etc. but I can't see the boots being any better on more technical stuff.

Unless you are fell running (they are too hard to use at speed), poles might well be the answer too. Use them for the get in / out, and for long boring descents, pop em on your bag for anything where you need your hands free. There is a poles are for wusses thing amongst a lot of people, but I know when we went mountaineering in New Zealand, the guides all use poles nowadays, and they were hardly unfit types. They are great for when you're pushing yourself beyond your regular level of walk.

Joe