I don't think that's entirely true. AFAIK You're allowed to record conversation you make with other people for your personal record without their consent. It's just not admissible as evidence.

Oh yeah, looks like you're right – as long as you give them to a third party.

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/archive/oftel/consumer/advice/faqs/prvfaq3.htm

nature of voyeurism was observing other people rather than recording yourself participating in events

It wouldn't be illegal if it was just him having a **** – the point is that there were other people and they didn't know they were being filmed (and could have had a reasonable expectation not to be filmed, given the private nature of the situation).

Joe

Get a grip yourself bob, thats a wholely different situation and you know it. Nothing happened on the tape that the other partner didn't agree to do with the defendant and enjoy, unlike being filmed in the changing rooms.

No it's exactly the same. Nothing happens in the changing rooms at a swimming pool that the kids and parents there didn't agree to do. In both situations, the person doesn't mind doing what they're doing, but hasn't agreed to be filmed doing it.

But at the end of the day, if the tapes had never been found and no-one was harmed in the making of it, what would it matter? It was the act of forwarding it to the "stars" of the film that caused the problems, otherwise in the grand scheme of things it would have made no difference to anyone.

Yeah, but that is surely why we have laws against covert filming of private acts generally (you aren't allowed to record telephone calls without consent either). It makes no difference to anyone except in the case that it becomes public, which as we see here is very much a possibility.

Joe

Maybe it is just me, but I reckon that sustained effort sports like cycling time trials, rowing etc. are always going to be easier than sports where the effort is on/off. I play unicycle hockey once a week for 1 hour 45, and that knackers me out way more than riding road bikes hard for the same time – 70% of the time you are going at absolutely 100% sprinting pace, and 30% of the time you are hanging around for a pass. It is like doing interval training solidly for almost 2 hours, or doing 50 100m sprints with short gaps between. I reckon pro-level football must be bloody hard for the same reason.

Obviously there are different types of fitness though – the ultra long endurance fitness versus sprinting type fitness. I guess team sports kind of come somewhere in between the two, which is what I find hard.

Joe

I quit my job in the private sector, spent 3 years doing a PhD, and now work in research. I earn £10k less than I did 4 years ago, using the same kind of skills. I can't think of any jobs where there are directly comparable roles where you would get paid more in the public sector? Can anyone identify one of these?

I like doing what I do because I have the freedom to do interesting things, and can work hard on things in an environment where my management are pretty good and don't do pointless micromanagement, or make crazy decisions to do things in a very inefficient way based on the general short termism that is the general way of working in the private sector software development industry. I probably work twice as hard, and get way more done, because I have that much more freedom to direct my work.

In many ways my experience is that in the private sector, people work way less hard than in public sector research, and generally get less done, due to massive inefficiency.

I've also done work in the past for a contracted out cleaning contractor – now that seemed terribly inefficient compared to hiring a cleaner directly, the amount they pay compared to the cleaner's pay is shocking, and I don't think they get a particularly good service from them either.

Joe

Have you thought about slightly less traditional style stuff?
The stuff this guy does is pretty inspirational:

What a great video. Looks really fun.

That guy in the vid is a bit wrong in the head. I take his point, but not in the UK!

Why not? I've quite often done a bike ride to a river, swim down some rapids (swim against the current until you get bored then hammer it downstream), run back to where the bike is. And that's just in Derbyshire – must be loads of places in the lakes, Scotland etc. where you could do it too. I can think of somewhere 10 miles ride from central of London where you could do a nice run in woods, climb trees, have a nice swim & bike ride for that matter. Okay you're a bit limited by temperature / wussyness as far as swimming much in winter, but the rest of the stuff I don't see why not (and if you don't swim, then you can wear shoes too).

Joe

http://www.childlocate.co.uk/faq.html

Does it without you needing any clever software on the phone or an expensive gps enabled phone. Obviously only to cell triangulation level, but like you say, might well be enough. All the completely free solutions people posted above require a symbian smartphone with built in gps, which is going to cost you £100 or more to start with, whereas this should work with a £5 nokia.

Only catch with the whole plan is that you need to find a pay as you go sim that won't expire if it isn't topped up. Not sure which networks do these nowadays, I think most will expire if you don't top them up for 3 months or a year.

Joe

Bit of a lottery this one, prices for public transport seem a bit random – my commute if I do it on public transport is £7 return for 18 miles each way, which works out at about 19p a mile, which I bet would be significantly less than driving it in the rush hour (and I get to sit on a comfy coach with big seats and read or check the internet or whatever.)

Have you checked season tickets etc. – in some places they only save you 10% or so, but sometimes they can save you tons (like on some journeys it can be something like 50-60% off compared to doing a daily commute if you get a yearly season)

Joe

If it's only a couple of inches at most on top of rock, then it'll probably be better riding than if you get it just after a big melt. Round us (just at the South end of the Peak District) it is a mix of a bit of snow, and really quite muddy other bits. Jacob's Ladder etc. are nice and rocky though, probably be good whatever the weather.

http://www.outside.co.uk/knowledge/webcam.html doesn't look too bad (apart from the weather being pretty minging), and that is in Grindleford, looking up at Stanage.

Joe

John Lewis own brand.

Made in Germany, by one of the big German brands (can't remember which), but £300 cheaper.

Not as cheap as the really cheap ones, but a whole lot cheaper than fancy Miele etc. and seems to work fine.

Obviously mudguards on the bike too, but then only an idiot rides without mudguards this time of year, so I'm sure you have them!

Joe

If as per my example you bought today at 30% below today's value, you'd have to see an extra 30% crash off of the 20% that we have already experienced. Not impossible, but we are all **** if that happened in more ways than just the value of our houses.

But surely you can't just head out and buy a house at 'below market value'. 9 times out of 10, if someone is willing to sell it to you for 30% less than what you think is market value, there is going to be something wrong with it that means it is worth 30% less than you think. And a surveyor who you are paying will put pretty much any price you ask them on it, RICS or not.

relatively safe Unit Trusts or similar

Only 'relatively' safe. Like if you'd bought some in 2003, you wouldn't be a happy bunny now (£2000 turned into about £1000 in my experience, although it is now coming slowly back up again, almost as much as the original investment now).

Joe

For the indoor aerials, I have a feeling there are slightly different ones optimised for digital rather than analog tv reception? Are your ones quite old?

Joe

Verbal / numeric reading test = puzzles. they make sense for jobs where those skills might come in useful and there's no more specific test to do.

Psychometric personality tests (Meyer Briggs etc.) are like horoscopes that some dodgy companies use to pretend that they are following some kind of science to employ the right people – they are pretty discredited really, for two reasons:
1) For most people, if you run the tests twice a couple of weeks apart, they'll get very different results as to what their personality type is.
2) If you ask people whether they think a personality description from the test fits their personality, almost everyone will say yes. If you give them the opposite personality type, again, almost everyone will say yes. It is like horoscopes where if you read any one, it always says something sensible and meaningful to you, no matter whether it is your own horoscope or not.

Joe

Actually – I think I'll contact Alan that writes GPSU and see if he can come up with some sort of ST–>GPX conversion

You mean to convert all the routes? (obviously you can do 'export to gpx' for an individual route, but it is a pain to do that for a lot of routes.

I talked to the sportstracker people about this – they said that it was in their wish list, but they seem to have stopped developing updates since then. I don't think it'd be that hard to read their dat files yourself if you're a programmer, although if sportstracker updates, there is no guarantee they won't mess with the format (they said).

Joe

Yes. On the phone, open up the workout to view, then go to the menu, and do properties and you can change the distance / time.

You can't change the actual gps data, but you can change what it recorded as the distance / time etc.

Joe

Last time I tried the user interface was an impenetrable nightmare, but that was a while ago.

It is a bit better nowadays, although not perfect by a long shot. It is great for web graphics and other stuff that will be primarily digital, although I understand it is lacking in colour handling features that some people doing stuff for professional printers require.

Joe

A couple of more obvious good places to eat in London. They are both smallish chains, but really good for the price.

Tas[/url] – has branches near Borough Market, one near the Tate, and a couple near Waterloo. Very good Turkish food, quite cheap, big portions, lovely freshly cooked Turkish bread.

Masala Zone[/url], nice cheap Indian food, branches handy for Covent Garden, Oxford Street, Camden Town, Picadilly etc.

Joe

Brick lane…over rated, over priced. Lived in bradford before so was dissappointed. Well only had one curry there but won't be going for another.

What a silly comment. Brick Lane has hundreds of curry houses, you tried one, so have decided that they must all be rubbish.

Some of them are good, but you need to do research to find out good ones. If you aren't fussy about wanting to drink with your meal, Maida[/url], just off the end of Brick Lane is very good, and pretty cheap for the portion sizes (plus amazing milkshakes for pudding).

Joe

@ llama : Agree that that a £500 PC will be capable of web design. I would however also start to dabble with graphic design, hence the interest in a Mac. I have no idea where all this will lead, but I have a lot of spare time and want to make better use of it.

There's no advantage of the Mac over the PC for either web design or graphic design. Pretty much all the standard software is Adobe stuff, which runs pretty much the same on either. It is worth buying a mac because you want a shinier looking operating system, or like the way Macs work generally, but it'll make bugger all difference to how well Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign etc. run. They all run great on Windows too.

Depending on what kind of graphic design you want to do (i.e. if you want to do things with print resolution photos) the processor spec could potentially make a big difference.

Also, my top web design tip, is that web design isn't really about writing web pages any more – nowadays anyone doing anything vaguely professional is using a content management system, so the only time they write much HTML is when programming templates for the CMS (which also often involves a fair bit of PHP or javascript programming). If you're writing a website that is ever going to be updated, you want it in a CMS. If you find yourself using Dreamweaver etc. to create core content for a website, you're probably about to build a rubbish hard to update website.

A side effect of that is that you really don't need to worry about what operating system you're using, as long as it has a web browser and general photo editing etc. tools.

having seen comments about setting up php, apache etc on Windows, it is a breeze on a mac. Everything is included out of the box. Not saying you should host a website on your mac but would allow you the chance to learn some of the server scripting should that be your thing.

The mac comes with a slightly dodgy setup of various web stuff installed, which probably isn't exactly what you'd want in the end. Changing it is a complete pain. Setting similar stuff up on a PC is really awfully hard, you have to go to wampserver.com[/url], click 'download', run the installer, and then you have a pretty well thought out setup of all the web server stuff you'd need, which updates itself nicely, and even lets you install multiple older versions of things if you want to test against them. It is a million times easier than pissing around with the config files on the default setup you'd get on a Mac or Linux.

Joe

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2700461&postcount=52 has what looks like a pretty simple circuit for a standlight using extra diodes, resistors and a super-capacitor, which reportedly works okay.

There is lots of talk on that thread too, some of it from people who've actually built these things. It appears that all the talk of needing constant current devices and blah is not really true in these designs where you have the capacitor in parallel with an LED, as the maximum capacitor voltage is regulated by the LED max voltage.

What hubs are you and Joe using at the moment ?.

I'm using Shimano DH-3N80 (on a road bike). I think the 3d72 is the disc version but I'm not sure. Be careful of older versions of the hubs, as they are less efficient and much heavier.

Joe

Is it only because of the supercap that you're recommending regulation circuits etc.?

Presumably you're agreed that without a capacitor, you can just run the LEDs straight off the rectified AC current?

Anyone on here now who knows the answer to this?

If you want to learn, first you need to learn to listen . . . but that's not happening . . . I feel I should give you one last safety tip, when you connect your supercap to your AC output dynamo . . . wear some safety goggles eh

Is it only because of the supercap that you're recommending regulation circuits etc.?

Presumably you're agreed that without a capacitor, you can just run the LEDs straight off the rectified AC current?

Joe

(who has no knowledge about supercapacitors and only enough knowledge of dynamos to know that they are current limited without a regulator, but no idea why)

Your dynamo may not work like another dynamo, but one thing is for sure, you require a regulator somewhere be that in the dynamo or the lamp or the supercap charging circuit . . .

Have you actually built dynamo circuits – because as far as I know, this is completely wrong, unless the supercap changes things a lot from a normal dynamo circuit.

I understood that it was in the nature of the construction of hub dynamos that they were self regulating to about 500ma. Certainly appears to be true for Shimano ones in my experience, and I know people have done similar things with the schmidt dynohubs, so I imagine it is true there. I don't think they have any regulation circuitry, I think it is something to do with the actual characteristics of the dynamo circuit. It certainly appears that you get an AC current out, which can go as high as you want voltage wise, but never goes about about 550ma current.

http://pilom.com/BicycleElectronics/DynamoCircuits.htm
says something about this.

What they don't have (for sure) is any voltage regulation – which is why we can run loads of LEDs in series off a dynamo (and why shimano make a separate voltage regulator for use with standard bulbs rather than LEDs, where too high a voltage makes them go bang).

Joe

You should also be using a constant current drive for the LED

Really? I understood that the nature of the dynamo circuit itself limits the current?

Certainly seems to be the case on my dynamo rear light – it gets to full brightness at about 3-4mph, and I've taken the bike up to >40mph loads of times, and ridden it in the dark for hundreds of hours, and it certainly doesn't have any protection circuit.

Rob: Any chance you could post up the circuit / parts you're using and pictures of your current light with the supercapacitor standlight. I've seen martin's circuit things, but they seem a bit complicated and it is hard to know exactly which one to use and how to put it together.

Joe

I can already use it for free on my Smartphone and PDA why not an iPhone?

Cos they know you're probably paying £35 a month for your phone calls, so you can afford it.

Seriously though, it's a new and quite significant feature, that wasn't available when you bought the software, so it doesn't seem that unfair to charge extra? Presumably it cost them something to develop (iPhone development is annoyingly expensive for a small company too, especially a company that doesn't use Apple stuff or develop for Mac already).

£20 doesn't sound like that bad value if it is a usable navigation system – if you wanted to buy a Garmin or Satmap standlone GPS with OS mapping, you'd be paying hundreds of pounds.

Joe

but only because there's a lot less cycling not because it's safe (as we have seen – there is 15 times more deaths/mile covered cyclign than driving).

Although those statistics apparently look a lot better for cyclists if you ignore motorway driving. Motorways are jolly safe, and people drive massive distances on them, thus making a large proportion of the miles covered in those statistics (whereas on that sort of long trip most cyclists will drive or take the train or something), so they have a disproportionate effect on the car statistics.

So you could say, in the situations where driving and cycling are comparable (getting places in town, ignoring the use of cars as long distance travel, which is a different kettle of fish), there isn't a massive difference in safety.

The obvious important difference anyway is that with a few very rare exceptions, cyclists typically only risk causing their own death. Car drivers very often cause the death of others. Hence the obvious need for regulation of car drivers, but no obvious need to regulate cyclists.

Joe

Getting as close to the feeling of the live performance as possible is what interests me more than the exact sound that was recorded

If you really wanted close to live performance, you'd not want fancy kit. Get yourself a bunch of probably quite bad quality but loud PA speakers, wire them up with 40 year old lawnmower cable, then up the bass to ludicrous levels, that'd get you much closer to the true live rock sound than some listening to a high quality reproduction of a 'live' recording that was taken straight off the desk at the gig and then has had the crowd noise added in.

Similarly, if you want the real studio recording sound, get hold of a pair of Yamaha NS-10s.

Although to be honest, if you need good quality equipment for a song to work, you're listening to crap music. Like that Johnny Cash – Personal Jesus someone posted up there, that is genius, and still sounds great on a pair of cheap laptop speakers.

Having said all that, the best music in my house comes from a yamaha U1. Nothing beats music that you're actually producing yourself.

Joe

machine wash tied inside a rugby sock (or a hiking sock, basically a nice big sock, so they don't get bashed around).

Joe

Spokes are expensive but then you have to take into account all the different buttings, lengths, colours etc & the shop can only buy them in 72's or 100's normally. They have to allow for a box of spokes to sit there for months before they are needed again.

Although you could buy a box of 100 spokes at retail for less than the 68 quid that this guy is being charged, let alone trade.

People need to support the LBS before its too late & they have gone, i'd love to see your Dell Laptop build an urgent wheel at 4pm the day before a big weekends riding!

That's great in theory, but in practice 9 times out of 10, the quickest way to get any bike stuff more complicated than an inner tube is to buy it online off Chain Reaction. Especially for people who work, so often can't get to bike shops when they're open.

Joe

Even a quick 15-20 minute ride like you describe will help your fitness if you do it regularly. Although you might find if you do that very often, you will want a longer ride soon enough.

Joe

It's hardly bizarre, a decent helmet mount, light weight and a much longer burn time would explain it.

Two out of three isn't bad. The diablo actually has the same burn time as the P7 torch (not surprising given it is using very similar technology in a very similar package).

Joe

Blidworth Bottoms also has some trails too (and all the other woods round there).

Joe

I'm sure I read somewhere that if you credit it in the titles, or decription, somewhere it's ok, and also if you edit the original, ie it's not the complete track or you mix it a bit, this is ok too as it's then not the original track, something like that? Also I remember something about if a radio DJ talks over part of a track they pay less royalties for playing it as it's not the complete track they've played?

Basically, none of that is true. It is all wrong.

Legally you have to have permission to use the music.

Practically, you're never going to get sued for it, although you might get your video taken down. Everyone sticks things on vimeo at the moment, and they don't check. Youtube do check. At some point I imagine everyone's vimeo videos will all go down suddenly due to this, but for now it is probably the best bet.

Frinstance… I did a video and used California Dreamin' as the soundtrack. After about 30 minutes, they muted the soundtrack. You then get offered the choice of choosing a song from their approved list, which funnilly enough included the exact same song- just a fractionally different edit with 2 seconds of silence at the start, which screwed up the cuts completely.

Is there some way to listen to their approved songs (or perhaps rip the approved song off a youtube vid), so that you can re-cut your video to fit?

Joe

Like most of these stupid plurals (I even saw some idiot claim Octopii was the plural of octopus once!*) forums is right in English (it being the language we are speaking I assume).

You can see it in the OED.

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/forum?view=uk

Fora might arguably be correct if you are referring to multiple public squares in Ancient Rome, as that is just doing as the Romans did. Forum is surely correct assuming you are referring to something recent.

Joe
*octopuses and there is no argument there, is isn't even the right type of word to pluralise with ii even if it did make sense.

There may be little difference in weight, by your calculation, but how much drag does one get from a hub dynamo ?. Also, hubs, as with the rest of the wheel are unspended weight and contribute to wheel weight with the obvious consequences for braking, turning(direction), etc.

It is surprisingly low the amount of drag that a modern dynamo adds. Not enough to be able to tell in your legs.

The hub is rotating weight, but because it is pretty much in the centre of the wheel, the moment of inertia relating to the rotation is very low (because rotational inertia is proportional to the square of the distance from the centre).

How long does your current set-up run for at full power, when you are stopped ?. I assume that you can maintain ~700 lumens at lower speeds ?.

Not answering for Rob's setup, but the normal ones come on at very very low speeds (if you walk with them, 1-2 mph they start up), and get to full brightness at 3mph or so, I'd expect a larger setup to require maybe 5mph for full brightness, but only testing can tell (and you still get a decent amount of light at low speeds).

You do have to build a wheel, which adds to the expense (my wheel cost a hundred quid or so). But it is oh so worth it.

On my bike, basically in terms of handling and noticeable bike weight or drag, there is no difference to having no lights. You just always have a light with you, that never runs out, with no penalty. And with the latest LEDs they are bright enough that you can potentially make a usable MTB dynamo. How awesome is that?

Joe

Coverage is very annoying – in our town, we have great signal on Orange, but t-mobile is very on and off. The next town down has terrible Orange, but great t-mobile signal.

Joe

Three are supposed to have the best overall 3g coverage, and it should be getting better too with their mast sharing with t-mobile which is coming in soon.

But really depends on where you are, check the maps, and go for the one with the highest coverage of your area.

http://www.compare3gmobilebroadband.co.uk/3g-coverage-uk.htm

The iPhone isn't renowned for good voice signal (probably not compared to an old nokia, which seem pretty good at hanging onto a signal), although some iPhones supposedly have lots of problems, which might be a warranty issue. It is worth checking if you have two phones on the same network, and one is much better than the other, to phone up vodafone and say, oi, my nokia 6630 can make calls here, but my fancy iPhone won't, and see what they say.

Joe

Best café breakfast I have had is I think at La Note, which is a French café in Berkeley, California.

Very good scrambled eggs, homefries, a ludicrous quantity of roasted garlic in there (I think I counted 10 cloves or something), and pancakes & maple syrup on the side. Oh and with a fresh citron pressé on the side.

Cost £8 including the drink, but it did mean I didn't need lunch really, and the quality was very very good. Haven't had anything so good anywhere else. Americans do some of the best breakfasts, and fancy Americans trying to pretend to be French (so not so fatty and using good ingredients) are even better.

I agree with the general point – like bloody coffee places that do terrible coffee or worse, you can get a teabag that has been put into milk, then had tepid water put on top of it (and it costs you £2 for the privilege), yet everyone still seems to go into them. And Starbucks cakes, they look quite fancy, but I can't believe any bugger actually likes those disgusting pieces of junk.

Oh and bad, but shiny looking restaurants, particularly outside London they're everywhere, it is so blimmin expensive to eat out when you are outside London, and such a lottery, so much worse on average than London eating, and more expensive which is pretty stupid.

Joe

Oh yeah, for anyone not bothered to build em up themselves (but with plenty of spare cash), here it is, the monster light:

"Not compliant with German traffic laws (far too much power)."
http://www.supernova-lights.com/shop/show_product.php?products_id=151

The person they get their recommendation from on the site is an ex-olympic xc mtb person, who apparently has won a bunch of other stuff, so I guess they work okay off road.

I have dynamo lights on my road bike. I got bought a B&M IQ Fly, and it is good enough (very good), so I've never bothered building a front. The rear light is a red 1W cree, that I picked up for about £3 (I think I got it off Dealextreme, can't remember), a white plastic cone to roughly point it out, a 20p rectifier from maplin and a bit of old aluminium seatpost. Shockingly bright for a rear light, very solidly built out of metal, sticks on top of my mudguard, and just goes on when the front light is on.

whats the weight of a hub dynamo (and its extra drag) and the weight of a 1.5f capacitor (I'm guessing arround 800-1000g for the capacitor).

Weight difference on the hub was about 200g. The front light unit is the lightest light I've ever had – weighs about 50g. So basically it is a 250g weight penalty compared to not having lights on. I imagine very few lights have <200g batteries except the really tiny ones (exposure joystick etc.)

It is a great advantage on a road bike just having the lights with you all the time too – they even magically turn on, so if you go into a dark tunnel, lights on, it gets very rainy and turns pitch black, on they pop. You never have those situations where you stay out later than expected and haven't charged your lights, they just always work. Before I fitted them, I had so many sketchy moments coming home on just flashy lights, getting caught out by having to do stuff late at work or impromptu trips to the pub or the cinema in summer on days when I usually wouldn't need lights. I had one pretty sketchy moment in New Zealand, when a ride across the top of some mountains took longer than it should, and I ended up descending 300m and 4km of very tight curves on a fancy LED light that had a very very low battery, and having to do it in a hurry so that at least I had some light to get down (it was complete pitch dark, especially under the trees). I never have those moments with the dynamo, it is great.

I've also done a fair few rides in the past where long runtimes were needed (like 6-8 hours or more), so have a house full of expensive batteries, and on all the lights I've had, at some point I've run out of battery at an inconvenient point, or had to do long sections of rides in the dark because I knew I only had 8 hours of run time. The time I did London-Brighton all in the dark, I did a whole load of it by moonlight, which was pretty sketchy.

In terms of drag – my light system uses a total of about 6W, maybe a bit under. I have the latest shimano dh-3n80 dynamo hub (this is worth getting – very efficient, supposedly way less drag than the older ones). If I go into a tunnel and the light turns on, I can't feel in my legs when it turns on. It obviously does use a little bit of energy when the light is on, but it is not enough that you can tell when you're riding. It is nothing like those old dynamo things that buzzed on the tyre.

2xAA batteries give enough light and btn time for most rides, when I need more light/time I just add more batteries, I could go for weeks with enough batteries to fill a 1.5f capacitor!

If you're using a light that runs off 2AA batteries and goes for more than about an hour, it isn't very bright – it will be way less bright than the modern commercial dynamo road front lights, and significantly less bright than a home-brew one with multiple LEDs (or those crazy german 3 LED dynamo lights). What you should compare a homebrewed dynamo light to are the lower end of the offroad lights – things like the hope and exposure 2 LED lights – which typically weigh about 4-500g, and have only 3 hour or so run times.

Joe