…this used to be very common but I’ve not found it much of a problem in recent years personally if you’ve Visa or Mastercard.

Isn’t Chip & Pin a European standard now?

Only found two this time that wouldn’t take my VISA card, and loads that would (did almost 3000 miles in total). So it isn’t a big risk, but worth keeping in mind.

It isn’t that they don’t have chip and pin, it’s that they don’t have Visa, Mastercard or Maestro, they only had whatever the French debit card thing is, something like ‘Link’ over here for cash machines.

With the 24hr automatic petrol stations, don’t empty your fueltank if you are relying on them, some of them don’t work with foreign bank cards. As long as there’s a visa sign or similar they’ll obviously work, but some only have French bank card signs.

Anywhere south (S. of France or Italy, Spain, Greece) will be super hot. Depending on how much you like really hot heat, that is a positive or a negative.

South of France will be packed in August, cities in France will be empty except for tourists. Paris is a weird combination of packed with tourists in the centre and completely dead in the suburbs in August.

What sort of app?

How you build an app depends a lot on what you want it to do.

If it’s something like expedia, amazon or whatever, something that basically just links to a web server, or is very very simple and doesn’t need to be fast and responsive then web content in a shell is doable. Otherwise I’d avoid it, it is a right pain once you start doing things that are more complex, different OS versions and things work slightly differently. They are also often slow, and often hang up a bit at times. That’s why Facebook have moved to an approach that uses mostly native code now.

If it is an action game or similar that needs quick updates, or anything to do with image processing, then web content in a shell is a real no-no.

Oh, and you kind of need a Mac ($$$) and a developer account ($99 I think) to do iOS development. There might be hacky ways to do it, but it’ll never get on the app store and onto people’s devices without a dev account.

Oh, and I paddled in the lake too, right next to a big sheet of ice. Was mildly chilly as it got over your knees to say the least.

I built a snowman last Saturday*.

Joe

* in Switzerland, at the San Gottardo pass, 2100m up.

Whilst I only use places where people are mostly polite, I think it is funny how all forums have a guaranteed fight like the helmet debate on cycling forums.

On unicyclist.com, it is posting anything either suggesting that unicycling is a circus thing (in which case you get a load of people saying that they are serious riders), or suggesting that you hate clowns/circus people (in which case performers get annoyed). On the outdoor swimming society one, mention a wetsuit in a vaguely disparaging way, or even mention that you don’t like to wear a wetsuit, and you immediately get into a fight with neoprene clad people who are sensitive about being considered a wuss for wearing one, and woe betide anyone who posts the word ‘wimpsuit’ instead of wetsuit on there.

Weird, my croozer original ones are going strong 2 years and an awful lot of miles in.

Maybe they changed recently.

I was going to say Schwalbe too, had some on a pushchair and they didn’t puncture unlike the rubbish original ones.

You can get fat 20″ rims and tyres, either 19″ trials rims with 20″ trials tyres (different inside diameter, same outside diameter due to the fat tyre), or if you don’t want to change from standard 20″ wheels, you can get various 20″x2.5″ tyres. They are quite expensive though.

Most of them are listed here:
19″ trials bike tires
http://www.unicycle.uk.com/unicycle-parts/tyres.html?isosize=251
20″ bmx tires
http://www.unicycle.uk.com/unicycle-parts/tyres.html?isosize=248

If the arrangement fee is enormous, then assuming you’ll re-fix again when it runs out, don’t forget to take it into account in your calculations of the total cost – ie. divide the arrangement fee by the number of years of each fixed rate and add that on. Can make a decent chunk of difference to the effective rate. eg. 1000 quid arrangement fee is £200 a year on a 5 year, rather than £333 a year on a 3 year. Probably not going to be a whole percentage difference but worth considering.

From that link:

NOTE : This product will not work with audio

Maybe you need the real twenty quid or whatever apple one for audio to work?

There is a risk with finding out the gender and going pink or blue mad, which is that the scans are not 100% perfect, something like 1 in 20 error rate. Person I know on facebook was selling a massive bundle of brand new pink clothes for not much money for that reason.

Sutton trust did the long term study a few years back about grades at uni being better for state school educated kids (maybe 2011 – it’ll be on their website somewhere).

There have also been various studies run internally at universities which have been reported – Cambridge did one while I was there, Cardiff have recently been in the news, as the observer obtained their private vs state school results study using a freedom of information request.All of them show state school students overachieving in comparison.

I think the Cambridge interview differs per college, for me it was a night in a student room, followed by a grilling from a seriously unfriendly mathematician, then a nice chat (and some quick tests I think) with the computer science guy. Completely solitary experience, I only met two academics and a couple of porters. If it had only been the mathematician, who knows if I’d have gone there.

Oh, and no chip on my shoulder about oxbridge, I had a lovely time there, I just feel strongly as someone who works in academia, that we should be trying to work out how to get the most able students onto our courses, rather than the current system, which clearly favours people with money to spend. If it takes some kind of ‘social engineering’ like looking beyond pure grades, then so be it

schools are much less likely to spoon feed, exam boards will be chosen that are more difficult (eg Pre U, IB) etc.

They do harder exams if they think it is more likely to get university offers and make it easier to get in. And as for not spoon feeding, the more intensive teaching and support offered by private scools is often said to lead to studnts who are less capable of independent thought when they get to uni – at least that is one of the reasons cited for them doing less well in many university courses.

I’m not saying kids don’t work at private schools, just that the level of relevant aptitude required to get onto a university course from a private school is lower than that from a state school – that’s just a fact, shows up in the results, nothing to argue about.

if it was a degree in looking after a sick parent then yes i can see how it can be applied to an application for a degree..

What a silly comment. Is it not obvious that it is harder to get a particular A level grade if you have half the time free than someone else, have to miss school for medical appointments etc. Thus meaning that someone who manages to get that grade whilst in those circumstances is going to be a lot brighter than someone who isn’t?

“Most” do not apparently Joe.

I believe that many essentially just apply a particular fixed and very narrow set of criteria (e.g. Coming from particular high poverty postcodes or schools), or things like being a parent, easily measurable so that they catch the very worst of the worst circumstances, but don’t apply anything else.

results and personality/extra curriculars

Results are inflated for rich kids by spending large amounts of money private schooling. So pretty obviously two kids with the same results from different backgrounds will be differently clever. This is borne out by the evidence on how much better state school kids with the same results do once they get to the university.

Extra curricular activities = inflated for rich kids by spending large amounts of money on private schooling or out of school activities, and on their parents arranging internships with members of their personal network. Poor kids don’t have the same opportunities. No real reason other than snobbery to look at them all that much.

Personality = Code-word for similar background to the interviewer / from ‘the right’ background. We’re hopefully past the days of people not being allowed into Oxbridge because they weren’t ‘clubbable’*, but realistically however hard we try, we’re all biased to like people who are most like us more.

Good. Should be on merit only.

So you think that someone who has looked after a sick parent for the last 5 years, managed to get decent A levels despite a terrible state school education and being so poor that they had to work throughout their a-levels is seriously not going to be cleverer / more worthy of ‘merit’ than someone with the same A level results who went to Eton, had plenty of time, and had private coaching throughout the holidays? Seriously?

If universities had any balls, they’d actively and openly profile schools and be clear that they require higher grades from schools where pupils are likely to have had an easier ride. As it is, they are scared of the outcry from the private schools, so private school pupils still have a massive advantage in admissions to the top universities, despite evidence that once they get there, the state school pupils do better which makes it pretty clear how poor our current systems are at identifying actual merit.

Most universities do apply some kind of ‘contextual factors’ to applications. They are mostly quite open about it – eg. our ones are listed here: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/ugstudy/applying/ourpolicies.aspx

Not involved admissions myself, but a funny thing there about ‘honing their personal statements’ – I’ve met people in very competitive, high profile departments who said that they pretty much don’t consider personal statements at all, considering them to essentially cause a bias for heavily coached private school pupils. They get so many candidates applying vs the number of places that other than taking account of any contextual factors, they pretty much go on the grades.

Same with candidate interviews, most universities dumped interviews a few years back for similar reasons; I understand at LSE they studied students who had been interviewed and compared with non-interviewed students and found they actually got better students in the end by not interviewing. I’ve done an Oxbridge interview, and frankly it is a silly and unnerving experience for someone coming from a state school – whereas if you’d gone to a fancy boarding school, it’d just be another trip to a fancy old building with names painted on boards outside the doors.

Yeah, aviva got me on their mailing list for some reason and clearly think I am a likely enough prospect to be worth chasing three or so times every year, but they quoted me something like £6k a year for a 13 year old golf which even with my low no claims and 2 years of driving costs well under 500 quid with anyone sensible. Win win for them, they don’t want the business, but if by chance some complete sucker pays it, then they get 5.5k extra to cover the hassle.

You’ve got to hand it to Red Bull. None of this stuff (Danny, balloon man etc) can make sense financially can it?

Only if you see Red Bull as primarily a seller of fizzy drinks. Their long term aim is for Red Bull Media House to make a profit as a content provider. Like the Red Bull Stratos skydive thing, apart from all the free advertising on everyone’s Facebook and on every news channel, it all promoted the accompanying documentary which they’d sold to BBC, National Geographic etc. Which I guess means producing things like this that are interesting to a mainstream audience.

The level of tricks that he is doing already appears impossible to pretty much anyone except bike nuts, anything more technical would be wasted on non nerds, whereas putting together an interesting and witty story and producing it immaculately means that it is fun to watch even if you’re not a bike trick nerd looking out for the latest 720 double backflip nosepick whatever.

I write left handed, but do most other things right handed. I’m quite a good juggler, but I can only do juggling 3 balls in one hand (quite a hard thing to do) in my right hand, and am very right dominant doing tricks. I play tennis right handed.

I am convinced that the writing is entirely because I was an arsey bugger at school and was messing with their minds. I used to use left handed scissors in those days too, although that might have been more to do with the joy of watching other people struggle to use them.

Oh, I use fork in left hand for most eating even if there isn’t any knife though (things like curries etc. where you don’t need a knife), but then a lot of righties do that too.

Ours was okay when it was used, but lasted about 6 months before it was more hassle than it was worth with her wanting to get out and walk all the time, then back in 10 seconds later, repeat until done. So another don’t spend too much money.

Whilst red bull do sell drinks still, they also make a lot of money selling their content to various people, TV channels etc. (for example the Felix Baumgartner jump videos). This is sold based on the fact that it is likely to attract lots of people to watch the TV channels. Part of the evidence for this will be the numbers of people who watch the online videos. So by watching it, you are in effect supporting them.

Who remembers the TV “detector” vans.

Apparently they could detect if you were watching TV using “sophisticated electronics”.

Yes. Off old CRT based screens at least. And they could see what is on the screen. It is pretty simple how it works. They used to have a demo of it at my old university’s security lab. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking

In theory also possible with LCDs (linked off that wiki article above), but I doubt they bother any more, given how much cheaper it is just to send out a load of letters.

I used to have faint sometimes as a kid, and that would happen.

Is a pain.

Oh and sometimes got it after a commute when I didn’t have a shower, but never since, maybe cos I now have a longer shower, and turn it down to cold half way through, half cold showers are supposed to be good for the circulation and are character building and fun anyway.

Mayonnaise underneath and chilli flakes on top. The mayo cooks and turns yummy.

I have a proper waterproof down sleeping bag. Macpac used to make them but don’t any more, I don’t know who does them now. Mine is the epic 150sf

It weighs 540g packed up, and is rated for 12 degrees comfort (but is okay down to more). Packs up into an absolutely tiny package – I’ve had it on my camelbak just strapped on the back and you hardly notice it.

Have slept a fair few nights out in just it, find somewhere sheltered and soft, get in, lie down. It is warmer with a lightweight thermarest if you can spare the weight, but if you find somewhere with springy undergrowth not too bad without.

Slept in it in Snowdonia a few years back and got snowed on. I survived fine, although I have to admit I did wake up cold in the morning.

I wouldn’t choose to sleep in it alone for no reason, but if for some reason you want to travel super light, it means you can just take normal riding gear, add just over 500g extra weight and you have all the kit you need for an overnight stop.

A 4 year old we know has a follow me tandem[/url]. Very sturdy looking piece of kit. The two people I’ve met with them think they are brilliant. You can click the bike on and off in seconds so they can ride or be towed. They can also pedal and help you along, apparently makes a difference.

Not even slightly cheap, but assuming your 4 year old has a bike already, it could do the job.

Oh and a single trailer might be okay, but at 4 you’re about to grow out of the usual trailer age anyway.

I’m experimenting on my commuter with not changing anything until it dies, along with only lubricating and not cleaning. Best part of a year since it went past the 1 mark on the chain checker and it still works well enough. Some point I’ll change it all if it stops working, but pretty sure I’d be a couple of chains and a cassette in by now.

High Peak / Tissington Trail area. There are an assortment of linking routes you can do between them. Peak park do a good leaflet covering the area.

Although be aware that there is a national cycle route that links between the Tissington and High Peak Trails, about 2.5 miles south of where they meet up. You might look at this on a map, and think, national cycle route, how bad can it be, and go down it whilst towing a child trailer on a bike with 23mm road tyres, only to find out that how bad it can be is covered in extremely large loose rocks for about half a mile, up and down hills and a whole lot harder than just biking the extra but completely flat 3 miles that the ‘shortcut’ saved. I should have looked more carefully at the map that day.

The railway trails are brilliant, all of them, although beware the climb at the start of the high peak trail in Cromford – with little kids, better to start at Middleton Top.

I’ve only cycled the Cromford Canal, and I would say that whilst it is nice in winter, even on a summer weekday it is a right pain to cycle on for the number of walkers on the narrow path – if you plan any canal cycling, make sure you all have bells.

I thought Ashbourne, Tissington, that way too, is very nice round there and less busy, or Bakewell / Baslow area where you have hills and rivers, Monsal Trail, Chatsworth farm / adventure playground etc.

If you happen to be in Matlock at any point, go to Matlock Meadows Ice Cream Parlour – short drive up the hill behind sainsbury’s (or bike, but it is a blooming steep road hill for kids), bit out of the way, but great ice cream plus farm animals to see (they also do bacon sandwiches, toasties, coffee etc.). Brilliant place and quieter than it should be.

Golfs are very comfy, and if I had loads of money to spend on a new one I can see the point, but spending that much money on an old one seems mental – the difference in comfort between an ancient golf and a newer version of a similar car like a focus, surely means that for the same money, you’d probably get something better in the less trendy car.

Midges midges midges. Don’t underestimate the midges.

Stay places that are high up, not sheltered, and not near water.

East Highlands was okay in September a bit back, I think East is generally better than West, when do the midges end?

West Highlands Way in May was a complete midge fest – absolute pain, particularly camping next to Loch Leven; had hundreds of bites. Skye, looks lovely, but the beaches can be super midgey too.

Do you want insurance for stuff being nicked, or to fly you home if you get injured?

If you have a single address in NZ for that long, you might be able to get home insurance to cover the gear, but it obviously won’t cover you being flown home if you are injured, which is why travel insurance is so expensive. If you’re happy with going to an NZ hospital if you get injured, then do you need fly-home cover? You might need private health insurance over there anyway if you’re not a permanent resident, think I remember something through work about gp visits and non-emergency treatment (in an A+E emergency situation, you get treated anyway as a UK citizen).

Double check the electrics, things wrong with ours:

The locks, check both passenger and drivers side doors open all the locks when you put the key in. Apparently an easy thing to fix with a bit of a solder, but a complete dismantle of the door means it is a long job. I just live with the passenger side door not working the central locking on ours.

Check the interior lights and boot light; if they all don’t work, it is a common thing, needs a completely new positive feed that bypasses the ‘comfort control unit’, cost me 80 quid to get done. Stupid design.

Ours has moss growing on all the door seals too, but at least the doors on ours drain water fine.

And I wouldn’t say it was ‘easy’ to fit two bikes in the back with seats folded down, unless your bikes are very small and don’t have mudguards. It is doable, preferably with both wheels off but the boot is teeny tiny given the car’s medium size – nothing like an Astra or other similar sized cars.

If you end up with a normal not pop-up tent and are putting it up and down loads, buy a compression stuff sack that is easy enough to stuff the tent itself into, and rather than rolling the tent up to fit it into the original bag, just bung it into the stuff sack and then do the straps up. Stops the tent getting creased, and it means that taking the tent down is a really quick job – we got it down to well under 2 minutes from fully pitched and pegged out to being packed up in the rucksack for our 2 man tent. Great if you are in Scotland being eaten alive by morning midge clouds. It also seems to take up slightly less space compressed than in the original bag.

I find when the trailer is fully loaded, pushing (on the bars) is really hard as the ‘forces’ are all wrong. I make much better progress with the power coming from ‘low down’ i.e the wheel – seems much more stable.

Yep. I think where I went wrong was in forgetting that this particular track goes up just under 100m in 1 km, and finishes by going across a pretty bumpy field. I should have gone out the back end of Bakewell on the road, 2km longer but I’d have ridden it all. The last bit I just couldn’t pedal at all, even in bottom mountain bike gear and I had to push and sort of heave it along, pushing from as low down on the bike as possible by holding the bars and the down-tube.

Depends on the trailer – I think mine has about a 40kg limit stated – 2 three year olds by themselves may be getting towards this limit…? (Miles is about 17kg, and he’s not big for his age).

Ours is 45kg weight limit I think, 32kg of two skinny kids, 1.2kg of tent, 2kg of sleeping bags (if only I could afford some lighter bags for the kids – theirs weigh more than mine!), 1kg for 2x thermarests, 2 kg for clothes, wellies, raincoats, 1kg for emergency snack, 1kg for teddies, books, night time nappies etc. 1kg for blankets. I think I’d have weight spare to stick a stove in (1kg including fuel + pans) if I really wanted to.

Assuming we’d camp up somewhere near a shop to buy food, and near somewhere to get dinner I think it would be doable if all the stuff squeezed in. I think I could just about do it with proper cooking too. I actually have some fancy panniers and a rack (and an all important triple chainring) on my road bike, so if I stuck to biking on road I reckon I could easily do it.

Oh, and slime in the bike trailer tubes. You don’t notice it at all, but it works brilliantly in those low pressure fat tyres – Rose’s trailer got a load of bramble thorns in the wheel a bit back, you could see the slime oozing slightly when I took the thorns out while it fixed the puncture, and it needed a little air when we got back, but no repairs needed.

Looks brilliant. Really want a weekend soon for Rose and I to go camping now, haven’t done bike trailer camping this year yet. Have promised I’ll take one of her friends camping at some point, I wonder if two kids + camping gear would be too much for the bike trailer…

I certainly used the bottomest gear on my mountain bike last time we went camping – coming up the hill out of Bakewell (Intake Lane), with 20 miles in my legs already I actually had to push in the end! And I had a lot less gear than you – I have an ultralight tent, a 500g sleeping bag, super-light cut down thermarest from my pre-parent days, plus I am lazy and tend to plan cold food + pub dinner which saves on the stove and pans. It all went in my double trailer with no panniers which is nice.

You are right about other kids too – it is amazing the way a 3 year old can meet another one, introduce their cuddly toys (‘this is Mr Alligator’ ‘Hello Mr Alligator, this is Piggy’ ‘Oink Oink’ ‘Snap Snap’) and then happily be off playing in minutes.

Personal car doing what normal people do…hardly a call for business insurance. We live on the edge don’t we

Just make sure she doesn’t crash it badly on the way to the post office with a load of work parcels.

If she’s driving for work, in a car without business insurance, then she is on dodgy grounds anyway. Unless your insurance says that you’re covered 3rd party for business use somewhere in the small print, you aren’t driving with the right cover. If you get caught, it’s a couple of hundred quid and 6 points. That’s why the police stop pizza delivery people for insurance all the time. I don’t find it adds much to my insurance personally, maybe £30 a year or something.

And if she is scared of driving a big vehicle for work, then she should get her extra training if they want her to drive it as part of her job. It isn’t a cheeky suggestion – if you don’t have a particular skill, then getting training to acquire it is a sensible thing to do, rather than just thinking that you never require any training because you did a very limited test 20 years ago and that anyone suggesting otherwise is a cheeky bugger.