Logitech ones are always quite good quality, although the last two cheap ones I've bought were fine (they were unbranded, bought in dodgy shops in various places), so I'd try any old cheapish one.

Joe

Sounds like they're charging you their single spoke price. Which is normal in some shops, but does make their wheels very expensive compared to building using spokes you buy yourself in multi-packs.

Are they all a similar spoke length, so they can just use one box of spokes, or are there 2 different lengths?

Would they build up with spokes you provide – you could pick up the right length db stainless spokes (Sapim for sure, probably DT) for about £30 if you bought them yourself.

Joe

That is a bummer.

I'm not surprised that there isn't much work & the cost of doing EPCs etc. is going down though – they seem to be shockingly simple, and largely done with automated software nowadays, so I'm guessing the people doing them can charge very little. And there doesn't seem to be much checking – I mean our one suggested that the best way to make our house more energy efficient was to put some insulation in the cavity walls (which the house doesn't have, built in 1790 out of big lumps of stone).

Although the last surveyor we employed gave us a report including telling us to get the chimney swept for the open fire, in a house with a 4 bar gas fire, so I guess looking at houses isn't exactly a highly professional profession in general.

Joe

Premiere CS4 is very powerful – a little fiddly to use, but no more so than most of the other powerful video editing programs.

Photoshop again very powerful, and if money is not an object, it is worth having – it is not much harder to use than the cheaper options either. As a bonus, pretty much every tutorial is based on it.

Bear in mind when you say "I need to do something to haul my photography out of the gutter" Photoshop is not going to anything to help there – it can make a good photo just right, but it really doesn't do much good for a boring or bad photo. Getting a good photo is still all about pressing the camera button at the right time whilst pointing it at the right thing (and possibly using the right settings, but that is a bit more of an advanced thing, and less important). Probably, like most 'creative' things, the best thing you can do to improve your photographs is to take pictures and invite other photographers to insult them (on courses they call it a 'crit' session or something). The advice you get will probably include tons of useless comments from people with no souls saying that you should learn about the 'rule of thirds' or other such junk but if you learn to take everything with a pinch of salt and sort out what is actually useful advice for you, having people be rude about your work is one of the best ways to improve at stuff, much better than showing them to people in a situation where social pressures encourage people not to be rude.

Joe

No, this is different. Google ads target specific websites or static content within a website. They have not until now, AFAIK, had the sophistication to sniff for stuff like forum thread phrases.

Once you post the thread, it becomes a web page. As far as google knows, it is like any other web page (that is why google search works on threads).

Given pretty much any meaningful site nowadays is on some kind of content management system, google would be pretty useless if it only looked at non-generated static html pages.

Joe

http://www.greenandblacks.com/uk/home.html

What about them:
1)They're owned by Cadbury's / Kraft foods.
2)They make expensive chocolate that isn't even as good quality as dairy milk (kind of chalky, yuck), and isn't fair trade (except for maya gold).

the one and only time I ever went into Nirvana in Wescott, the woman in there was blatently rude to me

Me too – I think it was because I only wanted a pump or a tube or something small. Although the shop was completely empty, so you'd think they could at least be helpful then, and perhaps people would come back and buy the fancy bikes?

Not to mention telling people that they originally built Summer Lightning, Regurgitator etc. and that the Redlands guys just fixed them up, when anyone who came to the dig days knows that 90% of the stuff involved complete clearing of undergrowth etc. and there blatantly were no trails underneath where the new trails go.

Joe

Queens Medical Centre is the hospital (aka Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust – Queens Medical Centre Campus).
http://www.nhs.uk/ServiceDirectories/Pages/Hospital.aspx?id=RX1RA

Transpeak is the bus route to QMC.
http://www.transpeak.co.uk/

Joe

Facebook user numbers have grown by something like 150% in the last year. So I imagine it is still growing.

I think it depends on how spread out your friends are how useful it is – it is dead useful for me, as a lot of friends in London and round the world in various places, who I'd never keep in touch with otherwise.

Twitter is weird – only use of it is for hassling customer services people, as the public relations people at companies tend to be on twitter. Same is true of facebook – if you can find a company director's name, then facebook message them, things get sorted quickly.

Joe

We live in Belper. If you're relying on trains to get to Derby, Belper or Duffield are better than Ambergate/Cromford etc. because they have very reliable buses also as a backup. The train service is very reliable.

If you're in Wirksworth etc. driving to the train station would be a waste of time, almost as easy to drive into Derby, and probably quicker to get bus into Derby.

If you live past Whatstandwell (cromford, Matlock etc.) traffic gets a bit worse, especially in the summer they can be a nightmare.

Belper is nice because you don't have to drive to go shopping / go out to a cafe / buy flowers & chocolate etc., or to get to the train station.

As for hospitals, Derby has 1 big hospital in the middle of nowhere and a smaller one right near the train station. It is a bit of a pain to get to the bigger one by public transport (dead easy on a bike though). Nottingham has the biggest hospital in the world or something – QMC, which has an hourly okay fast bus service from Belper, Whatstandwell etc. and is also pretty easy to get to from Nottingham train station (bus ride away though). If she can help it, I would avoid getting a job in Mansfield hospital – a scary place is Mansfield and I imagine the hospital is not exactly the nicest.

Joe

Also, if you want to drive to a trail centre type place, Cannock is probably equally quick to get to, and has much the same sort of stuff, but a bit hillier, almost certainly better drained, and there's way more downhilling (the downhills are pretty short, but there are quite a few runs)

Yeah, but the route database was the most useful thing about it, that you could just map a route and stick up a link to it.

Is there some way to store a route on wheresthepath so you can link to it?

It is annoying, because it clearly isn't a real legal risk, as a whole bunch of people (google, mapmyride/run, bikely, Ordnance Survey etc.) host routes, mapping data and all that. If they seriously thought there was any chance they'd be liable if someone rode a bike off a cliff, they wouldn't do it, and I'm sure they have very good legal advice, not just someone who isn't quite sure, who of course isn't willing to rule out the possibility (as any lawyer will when they are not sure about something).

Joe

Aah I'm not so sure then. I do like a good section of rapid downhill etc, any other ideas locally that I've not sorced yet? I'm between Matlock and derby in a place called belper!

The Chevin & Midshires Way as above are both in pretty good condition at the moment and you can ride em from the door in Belper (I sometimes fit in the Chevin at lunchtime or as a long way to the shops – it takes 42 minutes as a loop from Belper Mill).

I would only bother going to the Pines if I lived in Worksop or Mansfield (god forbid) or if there was a race on. It certainly isn't worth travelling to from pretty much the edge of the Peak District at this time of year unless you really love flat very muddy singletrack. You could drive to the Dark Peak in a pretty similar amount of time.

Much of the stuff up at Cromford / Riber etc. was dry and riding lovely at the weekend too, assuming you know where the trails there are?

Or if you want to travel further, over by Bakewell, Rowsley & Darley Dale looked surprisingly okay given the time of year (I was on a walk), loads of nice routes round there.

Oh yeah, Shining Cliff was *very* muddy last time I walked there, I wouldn't bother for a bit personally. Crich Chase was okay, but a bit minging too.

Joe

I had £300 to spend last year, and the best I could find was the Halfords Carrera bikes. They are decent bikes with good quality parts for the price as long as you have a rough idea of how to tighten things up when you get it.

I bought it in the sales, and at that point, people were selling second hand ones of the same model for the same price, and to be honest the 2nd hand bikes on here for that kind of price were no where near as high spec as what you got new. It is annoying, as I was hoping to go 2nd hand (recycling innit), but people seem to want 75% of rrp or something silly for 5 year old bikes, and I didn't want to pay extra for a 2nd hand less good bike.

It appears to work okay, I've done lots of riding on it over the winter.

Joe

Rode a rolhoff once, felt like I was dragging a 1.6kg rock arround with me over the rear wheel (which is what it was).

1590g+however much single cog weighs vs 1100g for a derailleur rear hub etc. (LX rear derailleur, hub & 11-34 cassette) doesn't sound like that bad? Or is there something else that I didn't account for? 500-600g doesn't sound like masses of difference really, I mean it isn't like it is at the outside of the wheel.

Joe

Oh yeah, don't bother with the 'helmet mounts' for torches etc., just strap them to your helmet with velcro straps (cost about a fiver for ten from maplin or similar). More secure, less high in the air, so less likely to catch on trees, and very quick to fit.

Joe

The P7 or MCE LED torch helmet mounted using velcro straps is great. Self contained unit, less than 200g (at least mine is, about 180g including 'mount'). Mine was £40 including 4 batteries (Just over 4 hours of run time on full beam).

Self contained unit, jolly bright, about an hour on full, or longer on medium (the diablo is a very similar unit, but made with a nicer user interface and probably slightly better made, but still with the rubbish 1 hour runtime). Oh and you can get spare batteries for about £2.50 each or something ridiculous, so when you want you can run it on full for an hour, then just swap over the battery, which you can't do with the diablo or similar. Oh and dead cheap.

Joe

I was in a similar boat and got a Carrera. It appears to work.

People were selling almost identical Carrera bikes, and worse spec name brand bikes second hand for more money than I bought my Carrera for.

The downside is that you have to be confident you can fix loose bolts etc. yourself – don't expect it to be safe out of the shop and whatever you do, don't expect to be able to ride it home.

Joe

Thing about this is that no one knows – even if they have a car to play with. If it was a software issue then presumably the same software that is crashed in the accelerator handling would be the software that was supposed to be dealing with the gear stick input. It should be isolated in the software, but in my experience working with firmware from several similar large engineering companies the isolation is often only a very loose software thing and the firmware guys often get up to some disgusting things to hide bugs – i've seen real production systems where basically the firmware reset itself every 30 seconds because the engineers couldn't fix some bug that happened after 40- 50 seconds – they just rebooted, making the system stop responding for 25ms twice a minute, rather than working out the bug.

The general problem out there is that the big engineering companies (particularly japanese ones) employ lots of hardware guys, but because nowadays most of the complexities are actually in the software which they don't really understand so well. A big part of why Sony (big hardware company) are getting screwed over by Apple (software experts who now make hardware) in the markets where they compete – sony hardware is nice but the usability and stability sucks because they don't know how to write the firmware for it. Potentially the toyota thing could just be this same kind of problem rearing it's head in the car industry.

Also, if you're not set on a really massive wheeled thing that looks ancient, there are 2 36" wheeled ones – "Coker Wheelman" and qu-ax penny farthing – which you can actually buy – http://www.unicycle.uk.com/shop/shopdisplayproduct.asp?catalogid=80

They are lovely pneumatic tyres, which you won't get on a replica.

http://www.hiwheel.com/

People have got these over here, although I hate to think what the postage cost is.

Joe

It is always a bit depressing when you go to a wedding, and the best man has not bothered to use his imagination to write his speech, and uses one of those 'how to write a best man guides', or searches the internet for jokes – it's always the toilet paper joke, or some ancient pun about getting the upper hand / getting a chance to say something. Don't make it worse by doing that for the grooms speech. Just say the nice stuff about the bridesmaids etc. then a load of stuff that you really mean, nice stuff about your wife, and look like you're either insanely happy, or almost going to burst into tears with the emotion. Those are always the nicest ones when you're at a wedding.

My wife and I did ours together – basically just wrote down a list of people we needed to thank so we didn't forget anyone (and split them in the middle of the list so we could each do half), and then said nice things off the cuff about the various people. We're both people who are used to standing up in front of groups of people and gabbing on, so we didn't bother with actually writing a speech as such. Kept it short, cos obviously everyone is waiting to see the best man rip the piss out of you. Oh and don't make the poor buggers wait for food, have the speeches at least after the main course.

Joe

viewranger (OS maps application) are definitely building an android version that will work on HTC Hero.

It is very good, although you'd have to buy your maps again.

I don't know what the battery life is on Android with the GPS on – on the iPhone I understand it is pretty useless and you can't swap the battery meaning that iPhones are basically no use as a gps for any decent length of ride.

joe

Look for a new job. When you get a new job, quit and make sure that the manager's manager is clear that you are quitting directly because of this guy.

I had a job like this once, and of a team of 6 when I started, 4 of them (plus me) quit in the year that I was there, all directly due to the boss being a ****. The bosses boss didn't work this out (despite it being made very clear to him why the people were leaving). In my experience senior management tend to be pretty useless in this kind of situation, because management people don't think in the long term, like 'how will our software development team work if we have a 70% turnover rate each year, and are more focused on avoiding the immediate hassle that having to sack or discipline a member of staff would cause. Unless the job is the best job in the world, I'd be sending out my CV.

Joe

If, as the Pope clearly believes, that homosexual practices are a sin, then how can he appoint someone who admits to carrying out those acts to an official capacity in the Catholic Church?

The jobs they are talking about aren't like being a preacher or similar, where what you believe is relevant to the job. For example, various churches are major landowners, should they be happy to say that the people who clean the buildings or work there as secretaries shouldn't be allowed to be gay?

It is odd, given that they are a religion supposedly based on forgiveness and that you should hate the sin but love the sinner*, that they choose to single out a particular sin to ban people (I don't see them banning people who drink alcohol, use contraception, eat shellfish etc.), presumably because they're a bit queasy about bum-sex or something?

Joe

*which is a big part of why the paedophile thing in Ireland is so hard for them to deal with, and they have just tended to turn a blind eye to it.

hang on a second, isn't this legislation about whether churches are forced to hire people who fundamentally disagree with their beliefs? You wouldn't expect a bank to hire a communist ceo, why should a church have to hire someone who was at odds with their principles (an atheist for example)?

Whether you agree or not, as BigDummy points out, the Bible is pretty clear on what is and isn't a sin. Surely the religious freedom enjoyed in this country should allow churches to hire people with views consistent with their own?

No, it's not about being forced to hire any particular person, it's about whether churches are allowed to advertise jobs and decide not to hire someone because they're gay. It as the same as they aren't allowed to say "we don't hire any women for a job", or "no blacks or Irish". I'm guessing you'd agree that churches shouldn't be allowed to refuse to hire black people and women? Why are gay people different?

Also, it isn't for jobs where the church is hiring someone to preach, where beliefs are still allowed to be taken into account obviously, but more for things like secretarial, administration posts etc. where really what someone believes / does in their spare time is not relevant to the job at all.

Joe

Thanks to the internet:

Erwin and Maple (1976) describe two male rhesus monkeys who lived together for 19 months and engaged in "reciprocal mounting with anal penetration."

People have also observed other gay animals in the wild (monkeys, birds, various other animals).

If you watch ducks, they are pretty filthy – gang rape (male on female and male on male) is one of their favourite activities (I'm guessing that's a sin!), and they aren't very monogamous to say the least. Oh penguins too – March of the Penguins apparently isn't very accurate.

Oh and you'll be happy to know monkeys engage in oral sex (sinful) and use dildos / masturbate (sinful).

Also, another interesting argument I've heard, is that if god really did exist, and did intend homosexuality to be sin, why the hell did he design male humans in such a way that having stuff stuck up their arse is quite so pleasurable?

Another random interesting fact, I understand rates of anal sex are pretty similar amongst hetero and homosexual couples, so the whole gay = bum sex thing is a bit of a red herring maybe.

Joe

I love climbs – on tarmac or easy stuff they're only okay, but nothing beats the feeling of having got yourself all the way up some monster pile of rocky horribleness or over a bunch of crazy roots. Almost as good as hammering back down the aforementioned pile of rocky horribleness.

Some lovely person on here recently posted up directions for a new to me route up one of my local hills – 245m of climbing, and at least 150m of the ascent is on stuff you have to think about at least a bit, finishing off with a fabulous rocky trail to haul yourself up. I think it has to be one of my favourite routes now.

Downhill is more fun when you're fit from climbing too. Although I still suck a bit at downhill I have to admit.

Joe

Not everyone sees it that way.

That was what I meant when I said people have a problem with you riding singletrack in shining cliff ('bike tracks' in the article).

Joe

I'm sure there was moaning recently about people parking on the access road (obviously everyone does mind), so I'm guessing some local person has printed up a bunch of these flyers and is flyering all the cars.

Isn't the road up to the top a restricted byway or some such nonsense anyway, meaning you can actually bike it. Also the signs in the woods suggest that cycling is only permitted on 'wider tracks' or something, which also implies that there isn't too much of a problem with you riding there (with the exception of on the off track 'bike trails' which there is a well known problem with people riding, especially in the winter mud).

I'm betting they're just annoyed by lazy people getting in the way of the access road. That sign doesn't refer to bikes anyway, mechanically propelled vehicle = car or motorbike, bike = human propelled.

Joe

Cheers guys,

New pads in the post.

Is it normal for pads to only last for 6 months or so? I ride mainly in the White Peak, and have been riding through the wintery weather.

Joe

Between 15 and 17 miles an hour average on the road bike (actual average including stops, not a moving/cheating average) on my 16 mile commute (about 1200 feet of climbing).

I can keep up about 12-13 miles an hour average on the mountain bike for an hour on the same roads (with 2.3" knobblies at low pressure though).

Joe

Hmm. The discs look cleanish – all the snow left them pretty clean, although there has been a bit of mud around the last couple of rides.

It is weird, everything feels fine, the pads aren't obviously dead, but they have just lost their power to stop me quickly.

Joe

Overall in winter I'm slower generally. Possible reasons:

More air resistance, both because it is colder and air is more dense, and also because you tend to wear more and bulkier clothes.

Higher winds (even if you get a tailwind one way, you are still less efficient overall).

Supposedly you use more energy in the cold, due to energy used to keep yourself warm or something. Although some studies claim that this isn't an issue for people exercising very hard, only for moderate/light exercise – depends how hard you commute.

Traffic goes slower so you spend more energy stopping and starting while you wait for cars to get out of your way.

More rain – again makes you slower.

More riding in darkness, so you hold back a bit more on the big descents – I know I have one descent I can happily hit >60km/h on in the light, but in the dark I get up to 45-50 (maybe less of an issue in London commutes!).

Joe

Warranties are almost universally reserved for the original purchaser of the item.

Although worth checking – some companies let you transfer warranty (Dell do for their laptops for example)

For that kind of distance, if I was skint, I'd buy an old 10 speed racer for about £50. Reliable, low maintenance, drop bars (much better for riding in traffic & long distance comfort), typically come with 28mm or so tyres, which are fine if you want a bit of mild off road, towpaths etc. and best of all the old 5 speed rear casettes and chains last for tens of thousands of miles. If you can pick up one that is new enough to be 700c, then there is most choice of tyres, but they are going to cost slightly more – most bike shops will do old 27×1 1/4" tyres still (chain reaction sell a few too). Cheaper to buy a 2nd hand bike than a new frame & tyres.

Joe

I've used buffalo but they are insanely warm, so much so that I cant' wear it biking.

Was it the biking specific lightweight one, or the normal climbing type? I'd love to get one to try, but for £100 they are a bit much to buy on a whim.

Joe

Get fitter, sweat less.

Not true. I sweat way more now I'm fit than I ever did before.

Going back to the original question – various people have said it, but nothing waterproof lets liquid through, only water vapour. So once you sweat enough for it to become liquid, you're buggered. Anyone who says that their jacket breathes perfectly either just naturally doesn't sweat much, or doesn't exercise very hard. Breathable waterproofs are fantastic for walking and that level of exercise (slow cycling is fine), but once you start putting in effort, you want something non-waterproof.

One thing worth trying is Buffalo stuff – it is designed based on the fact that breathable waterproofs don't work, and is designed to keep you warm even though you're wet, and to dry very quickly. Pretty expensive, but not that expensive compared with other fancy biking jackets. They do a lightweight one which might be okay for summer (the normal weight stuff is very very warm – for winter mountaineering mainly).
http://www.buffalosystems.co.uk/ls6.htm

Joe

How is the battery life on iPhone running routebuddy? Enough for an 8 hour or so day of riding? I know in some gps apps the iPhone will run out in about 3 hours, which is shocking.

On the N95 that I currently use, it lasts about 6 hours, which is a pain for long road rides, but at least I can take a spare battery with me.

Joe

What chipset are the Android phones using joe?
And how are they better? Faster TTFF?

I think the iPhone is an Infineon PMB2525 Hammerhead II GPS (was definitely that in the 3G but may have changed since).

Not sure about the chipset, but we have the G1 and Hero, and they are both way faster to fix, and you get much better accuracy than our iPhone 3G units. The tracks from the iPhones really suck compared to a modern garmin unit, whereas the HTC phones are some of the best consumer GPSs I've seen – very accurate.

About the 5800 – the Nokia symbian phones are quite nice for mapping currently, but not at all future proof, very few people bothering to develop applications for them any more, as it is such a pain to do. We are pretty much stopping bothering with Nokia here, and we have something like 30 handsets.

Joe