One thing I do like with presta is the nut that screws down against the rim which helps as it stops the valve pushing downwards when you're trying to get a pump on.

Schwalbe inner tubes have these on the schrader tubes too.

Can't really see it makes too much difference but my mate said if you're ever out with a puncture and your pump is shot, you could blow it up at a garage with a shrader valve

I've had this – pump exploded and died miles from home. Garage airline did the job. Although nowadays many UK garages have those stupid push button machines which probably aren't so good for this as the old whooshy tube machines.

Joe

You should be able to use PC truetype fonts on Mac OS X. Sometimes it is a pain getting them to work, but it should be possible – it supports pretty much every type of font.

Doesn't Helvetica come with Mac OS anyway?

Joe

watts was meaningless even for halogens, as some of them over-volted, or used more efficient halogen bulbs, meaning two different halogens with 10w bulbs in could differ in actual light output by 40-50%.

Lumens are also slightly meaningless, in that most manufacturers don't actually measure it and just make up lies about it based on the theoretical maximum output of the LED that they are using, ignoring things like optics/reflectors that make things less efficient or ignoring how much current they are putting into it.

Joe

You can get okayish flat pedals that toe-clips will fit on.

I have some VP ones which look a bit like old Shimano DX flats, but have reflectors on the front and back. Take a reflector off, and with some fiddling, you can attach clips to the pedals.

You have to use strapless clips (with no front) – there are plastic ones available in loads of places which work okay.

These look sort of similar to what I have:
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=16097
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=5195

On some of them, the body is the wrong way round for it to work, you either need to put something under the clip (like a small block of wood), or swap the left and right pedal bodies.

Although having said that – it takes more time to take off the clips than to swap pedals, and a pair of lightweight road clip & strap pedals is pretty light.

Joe

There's still good riding round the south end of the Peak District (Matlock way) – although I'd expect a lot of mud now, and some snow and ice on the tops. Main roads to get there from here (Derby / Nottingham / Belper) all seem fine now, although I don't know about the roads across the Peak District from Manchester.

I did a 25 miler round Darley Dale on Tuesday. That was awesome, all the descents ridable, some of the top bits on Beeley Moor under 14 inches of snow, some of the uphills were icy to say the least too (the uphill on the road to Riber was crazy hard). It hasn't stopped being ridable round here all through the snowy weather, it just takes a little bit more effort.

Joe

Round here, almost all the schools closed, there were something ridiculous like 30 car accidents on the ice in one morning. Lots of the steep roads were covered in sheet ice, I saw a stranded car on the moor road. etc. I'd be pissed off if I had an idiot employer who suggested we should all struggle in to work on a day like that, or else lose a day of pay. It just shows zero respect for the safety of your staff encouraging them to drive in this weather.

And as for the people who drive 50 miles on very icy roads and 'risk losing their no claims', the last thing that employers should be doing is encouraging them by docking people's pay.

Obviously people shouldn't take the piss, but even the A52 (big main road/bypass road) earlier this week was dangerous in parts, I know a couple of people who've bashed their cars, very sensible drivers generally. It'd be stupid to struggle in unless you have a really important job (like if you drive a gritter, or work in a hospital, I don't mean if you're a middle manager in IT). Employers who force people to drive in this weather are just stupid, it's short term thinking, in the long term they'd have happier, safer staff, and keep them longer by not penny pinching about things like this.

Personally, I have the misfortune to be employed by someone who makes it all too easy to work from home, so I've worked full days all through, but I haven't been in the office as much as usual for sure. I don't know why most office jobs don't sort out home working, times like this it is so much easier to stay productive.

Joe (in the office today)

There are loads of bunkhouses around the Hope valley –

e.g.
http://www.hitchnhike.co.uk/hope_valley_peak_district_accommodation_bunkhouses.htm

I know people who've stayed here, which coincidentally is absolutely right bang in the middle of loads of great bike riding – trails from about 40m away. I think it may be pretty basic though.
http://www.independenthostelguide.com/selected-accommodation.php?area=72

Joe

http://www.unicycle.co.uk to buy a unicycle.

If you don't have enough time to learn to juggle on a unicycle (I found it was actually quite hard to get the two things down pat), then I've seen a fair few people make getting on a unicycle and riding in a straight line into a decent 4-5 minute act. The trick with that is a)make it look hard, and b)use volunteers to help you get on. Then you don't need to learn to mount, you can climb all over the volunteers and make people laugh, and as long as you make it look very very hard to ride, people will like it and cheer you once you manage to ride off. If you can do a trick (turn round or something) once you're on, all the better.

If you have space and can just about unicycle, then juggling whilst riding in a straight line is not too hard mind, it is only if you have to stop and juggle that it is really hard. A very bad unicyclist could probably do a couple of seconds juggling whilst riding in a straight line.

Joe

The 'equivalent to halogen' things on the packets are lies. They will be typically something between 2 and 3 times as bright as equivalent wattage halogen, maybe 4 at a push, depending on how fancy it is, how new an LED it uses and how good bulbs you had before.

So to replace a 20w, you want at least a 5w, but in the type of cheap bulb you're looking at, you'd probably need closer to 10W of LED per 20W bulb.

You can tell ones that will be a complete waste of time and money, because they have tons of tiny LEDs in. Don't bother buying those. The only ones worth considering have just 1,2 or 3 big LEDs inside the lamp unit.

Joe

New Zealand itself is a beautiful quiet place ( think large lake district) but everything is so far away and the bike trails certainly don't match what i have within 5 mins of my house ( rossendale).

Yeah, I found that a pain – having to travel so far to ride anything other than local trails (and having so many large areas where you just aren't allowed to ride any of it).

Joe

I've been out there working. It was okay, and some things were nicer than here, but I don't think I'd want to go out there forever, it just wasn't as nice a lifestyle overall.

If it's a choice between Wellington and Auckland, Wellington is the place to go for riding, although most of the best riding is in the South Island.

I'd give it a go, some people love it, other people miss loads of stuff, but it isn't the end of the world if you have to come back after a year or two.

Joe

Clearly i ride a lot more and in more adverse conditions than those who don't like mudgueards. Mudgueards save me from being soaking wet and filthy all teh time – it allows me to go into a pub for example without trailing mud everywhere.

Probably 35 hrs riding in the last couple of weeks and I shall have my mudguards on for a solo strathpuffer.

I don't just ride a few miles every couple of weeks

That is exactly it – if on top of jerseys and shorts, every time I went for a ride I also had to wash overshorts & my waterproofs, then I'd be running the washing machine every day or else I'd also need 5 different sets of waterproof / waterproof shorts. As it is, I was out for 4 hours yesterday in mud, snow, horrible slushy gritted roads, through stream crossings, and it was raining when it wasn't sleeting, jersey is in the wash, trousers I was wearing came back pretty much dry, fine to wear another day. Okay if you only ride once a week on a Saturday maybe, but if you ride most days, then it would be a right old pain not having guards.

I do ride in the hills – not just trail centres and I tend to ride for 5 hrs + at a time – too long to be wsoaking wet unnessasarily

Again, totally right, wet arse is okay if you're doing a short ride where you don't stop for lunch, but otherwise, if you're doing a normal length day ride, like 40 miles or so, with a stop in the middle, it is minging to have grit up your arse when you stop.

I think they look 'orrible and getting propper dirty is half the fun. If you wear the right kit the worst of the weather stays out anyway.

'The right kit' is mudguards. You can wear £200 worth of waterproofs and fancy waterproof shorts that needs washing after every ride, or you can put on £10 of mudguards, that are zero maintenance, and mean you can ride wearing normal gear.

It's a bit of mud and a bit of water, for a few hours maybe once or twice a week,

I guess the people who are into the anti-mudguard fashion victim thing are mainly people like you – once a week riders, who can cope with cleaning loads of extra waterproof clothes after every ride, and don't need multiple lots of ride clothing, so can afford to buy the expensive waterproof shorts and the like. Most regular riders you see out seem to have them nowadays.

I have these on my bike (hardtail though), got em for about £8 in a sale. The fork mounted mudguard seems to magically keep all the front wheel muck off my face, and the back one works perfectly too.

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=36755

Joe

I have no idea exactly what terrain you want for ski touring, but I was cycling through a foot and a half (over the hubs) of powder above Darley Dale yesterday, on Beeley Moor (the last 9 pics in http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=177714&id=635999387&l=d03f7c7311 ). But once you get down to the valleys, it is pretty minging sludge now, I don't think you'd get much in the way of descent, but if you wanted rolling singletrack with a bunch of snow on top of it, and didn't mind about scratching your toys on the few rocks that point up, maybe it would be fun.

I would get out there very quick if you're thinking Peak District mind, weather looks like a thaw on Thursday or Friday.

Joe

If you have 'strong morals', then you either don't want to be in sales, or want to get rid of your morals. Surely sales people don't have morals?

Joe

last year Swine flu – I can recall the governments chief scientist telling us that we could have upwards of 65,000 deaths, that people doubting the vaccination programme were extremists, and we spent whats believed to be several hundred million quid on vaccines to cover the whole population – actual death toll about 200.

So they said that in the worst case, with a completely un-vaccinated population, lots of people could die. Then they vaccinated all the vulnerable people in the population, and hardly anyone died.

So maybe the vaccine program worked? Or maybe the disease was actually pretty harmless? Or maybe it was something in between the two. How can you know that vaccinating a load of people was a waste of time, just based on the evidence that all these vaccinated people didn't die – we've gone and made them immune to it for goodness sake.

Joe

Where did they take OS X from, just out of interest?

They bought it off Next (although to be fair Steve Jobs was involved in Next too).

And the original iPod interface?

Creative, according to the patent suit they lost? Although to be fair, they did make the UI a bit nicer.

Joe

Don't do it.

Get a host with WordPress (or joomla or another similar content management system) on it. Even if you have a bit of existing content already, it'll take you less time overall to put the existing content into a content management system (CMS) than to update html pages on a regular basis.

Once you have the site in wordpress or joomla, you can do the sort of basic editing that you want to do just on the website itself. Only a sucker makes a website without a CMS nowadays, writing HTML is slower, more prone to errors and inconsistencies, and generally makes something that doesn't look as good either. Updating my old html site took usually an hour, nowadays with wordpress I find an update takes about 15 minutes at most.

Joe

Oh yeah, one thing I also forgot, if she likes doing comics, comiclife is the software for that. Worth the money, there is nothing similar for free, and my comic making friend assures me it is very good.

http://comiclife.com/.

Joe

I don't suppose anyone has an old but non-working one that they'd let go cheap?

I have one that mostly works except I could do with some spare parts to try and fix some little niggles on it, and I don't want to pay the £100 or more that they fetch on ebay for a whole new working one.

Joe

If you want to paint or draw on a computer, photoshop is completely the wrong tool, as is gimp, as is blender.

Gimp is a nice tool for photo editing (as is photoshop). Blender is an okay, tool for 3d modelling, although it has a terrible interface, and I wouldn't wish it on my children.

If you want her to learn vector illustration, then corel draw will do the job if you have it (it isn't that hard to move from Corel Draw to Adobe Illustrator.) Again it isn't painting on a computer, but it is at least a way of creating nice images on a computer. Inkscape is okay if a little buggy, and not as good as Corel Draw.

Although if she wants to do painting like stuff on a computer, something like ArtRage http://www.artrage.com/ is really fun. There are fancy expensive things that are similar although harder to use (and more complex) like Corel Painter (which is probably the standard for this type of program, but v-expensive). They make most sense with a graphics tablet (you need one that is pressure sensitive). Some graphics tablets even come with ArtRage nowadays, and they aren't very expensive.

Doing painting on a computer is great fun. It has loads of advantages over traditional painting, whilst achieving the same look in the end result. The real advantages I find over paper are:

a)You can undo easily.
b)You can do multiple layers, so you can paint bits of the picture at a time.
c)You can save and print multiple copies easily, and upload them so friends can see them / get them put into photobooks etc.
d)You have access to an infinite number of colours (well around 4 billion)
e)You have access to masses of different painting tools.
f)You can choose to erase stuff very cleanly (although you can use a simulated rubbing out type tool).
g)You can zoom in to do details

I've just recently done a kids book using a digital painting tool (I actually used mypaint, which is free, but fiddly to use – I'd recommend ArtRage over it if you have the money going spare – it is pretty cheap after all), and I reckon it took us about 1/4 of the time it'd take us to do the same thing by hand, with a way better looking end result, it looks like someone vaguely good at painting has painted the pictures, you can't see any of the points where I slipped and had to undo, whereas usually our books are a lot more rustic looking (plus this time we can print off two copies rather than just making the one).

Joe

I've got the Pentax Optio W30 – it is now about 3 years old I think, I can't quite remember when I picked it up.

It has been kayaking (and fallen in), swimming in the sea and rivers probably 30 times (for 45 minutes at a time), riding most weeks including in torrential rain, snow, falling into fords etc. I've slid down waterfalls whilst videoing with it, mountain unicycled down technical trails whilst holding it at arms length and videoing (it's had a few knocks and drops doing that!), been in Scottish winter conditions (cold enough that camelbak tubes froze really quickly).

I don't own a case for it, just stick it in a pocket of my shorts / swimming shorts or whatever. When I first got it I figured it was cheap enough that if it lasted a year, it'd be great, and also that there was no point mollycoddling such a rugged camera. But now it appears to have lasted longer than any of my previous digital cameras, which were at least slightly mollycoddled.

It takes pictures like pretty much any other compact camera, and is nice and pocketable. If I wanted another compact, I'd probably pick up the W80.

Joe

I wear tracksuit bottoms (shiny 100% polyester ones with 100% polyester lining, avoid ones with cotton lining). Wear em over your shorts / underwear. Toasty warm, very quick drying, cost a fiver. Okay they are not fancy and aerodynamic, but that makes next to no difference on a commute.

Joe

All the people saying that it is a pain for shops to have to call people back, well, that's fine. No one is saying that shops should always provide the service of finding out something and calling people back. But if you don't provide that service, don't pretend that you do. Same as if you don't actually bother to order things, don't pretend that you will. There's no problem if someone says 'I can't get that', or 'Give me a call tomorrow', or 'You'll have to come in to the shop' that is being honest. Saying that you'll call back, as most shops seem to, and not calling back (as most seem to also), is just stupid, and pisses people off.

Joe

I once went out on a ride twice, once at 12 midnight, completely wasted after half a bottle of vodka, then again at 11am the next morning. Apparently in the night I happily rode down the big drops, off the set of 1.5 foot high steps etc. In the day, I gingerly stepped down them.

Although I did get more mysterious bramble scratches on my face on the evening ride than I did on the daytime ride, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend it!

Joe

It seems to me that to some, university has almost become a right of passage, an expectation that kids go there to break the bond with home, have a good time etc, with the educational aspect almost seen as secondary. I think it is important to break the bonds with home, have a good time etc, but think that this can be achieved through other means, e.g. travelling. This might give them a sense of what they want to do and achieve in life and perhaps go to university later with a clearer focus

I'd agree with that (although do keep sending your kids to uni people – it pays my wages!) – the best kind of students are the ones who know what they want to do and have some idea of why. It doesn't have to be that they want to do engineering or whatever, someone who wants to study media studies because they are absolutely fascinated by radical feminist critiques of 1970s Prog Rock might just as sensibly go to university. It is the ones who aren't motivated at all, and just went because they felt they should, or are motivated by going and and getting pissed for 3 years, or came to uni to do a subject because their parents told them to who could really benefit from not just turning up by default.

Joe

It's hard know really though –

either it was:
a)Massive overkill, hyped up panic, what a waste of time vaccinating everyone.
or:
b)Just in time vaccine program stopped a very bad illness hitting the most vulnerable people and causing significant badness.

You can't really tell which one it was, given that we did vaccinate lots of the most vulnerable people.

Joe

Snow leopard upgrade for tiger, £25

What the thing that says 'Snow leopard upgrade for Leopard' and also says 'Mac OS X v10.4 (Tiger): Upgrade by purchasing the (£130) Mac Box Set, which includes Snow Leopard, iLife ’09, and iWork ’09.'? Does it work anyway, despite Apple saying it won't?

Joe

Total = £9,934

£6554 excluding tuition fees. Still £4500 less than the NUS claim.

The OS upgrade from tiger is only cheap and easy if your idea of 'cheap and easy' is £130, which I imagine it isn't with a budget of £400 in total.

I would beware of buying a mac second hand (or probably most laptops to be honest). If something goes wrong, it will be a throw away job the cost of fixing most things on fancy laptops (Apple/Sony in particular) is so high.

Also, probably it's not what you're looking at, but some people still try and palm off the old non-intel macbooks. They are basically worthless, so whatever you do don't get one of those, or the famously unreliable original intel ones (they had a tendency to overheat and destroy the main board).

Joe

Actually I'm thinking that maybe she should have to worry about money, even if she knows that at the end of the day we would never leave her high and dry. Right now she seems to think she's Paris Hilton (bad parenting, I know) so a little reality might help her in th long term.

Fair enough – you are probably a bit more like my parents then!

I do know someone who sent all their kids to fancy private schools till the age of 18, with the proviso that when they wanted to go to university, they had to fund it themselves. I think they ended up working for a couple of years beforehand or something. I guess they ended up knowing the value of money!

Joe

Oh yeah, one other thing – are you abroad in the EU, or abroad outside the EU – if you're in the EU, but your kid is a UK national, you may have a chance at the full student loan stuff. You'd need to check, but on the website it says: "Students who are settled in the UK may also be eligible if they have exercised a right of residence in the EEA or Switzerland before returning to the UK to study."

Joe

Oh and the big thing I did to make money whilst at university was summer jobs. It is very course dependent – if you're doing something like computer science or engineering, you can get jobs doing things related to the course that make you 3 or 4K over a couple of months in the summer.

Joe

As I understand it these flu vaccines are not a public health policy in the same way MMR is. These letters are part of a targeted invitational programme to immunise those at greatest risk, not reduce infection rates to sub-epidemic levels.

Yeah, unless you're working in a hospital/school etc. it's to stop people who if they had it would be at risk of dying / having their health damaged in the long term, hence it being given to old people, kids, and pregnant women. So basically it's your choice as to whether you want to remove the risk from your kids.

As far as the 'suspected cases of swine flu', it does seem that everyone who had a bit of flu in the last year has been told that it could possibly have been swine flu.

Joe

When I was at uni, the NUS 'living costs' were always a bit bollocks, significantly more than I had/spent anyway.

It does depend a lot on which city mind – in Nottingham it would be dead easy to live on £10k a year (you could probably save up some money if you wanted to, or go out most nights). In London, it'd be pretty hard to cope on that money, you'd have to live somewhere pretty minging.

As for where people get the money – people seem to get their money from student loans (3k or whatever), then overdrafts at bank (used to be about £1k a year, probably more like £2k now), then money from parents.

Although having said that, whilst it is being generous, unless your kid is a complete airhead who is going to drink themselves into oblivion, and if you can afford it, I'd just give em the NUS recommended amount and let them have a nice time and not have to worry about money at all.

Joe

What a load of bollocks. Why are people so bloody afraid of lawyers nowadays that they will stop doing things due to some theoretical risk of being sued, where the person sueing would have bugger all chance of winning. Seriously – the people who run the big commercial route sites (mapmyride, bikeley, googles my tracks etc) almost certainly have taken advice on this, and they'd be much more likely targets to sue, not to mention some of them being US based, so living in a far more litigious society.

Joe
(this also goes for our local council – who don't grit icy pavements because they claim people will sue them if they do,)

Last time we had a plumber called out, it cost £80 an hour or part of plus parts. We were in rented accommodation so landlord paying. So it'd be about £170 for what you're saying probably. That was emergency call out not just a routine job, and in London, land of everything being expensive.

Joe

Snowman Crime Scene:

My wife does not approve, she says it is a bit sick! Although at least I did this in the back garden, she really was not impressed by the pregnant snow-lady in the front garden. Apparently snow-people shouldn't have breasts or outy belly buttons.

Joe

The only time I've ever gone compact was when I used my CX bike for the Fred Whitton Challenge, that has 34/48 on it which was a pain for most of the ride but quite nice to be able to ride Hardknott and Wrynose with no problems.

That really sums up the point of a triple – rather than having two bikes with different gearing, and then finding out that the lower geared one is great for half a ride, and the higher geared one best for the other half, you can have both, with just a simple click of the gear shifter to go from one to the other.

Plus it means if you unexpectedly find yourself taking 10kg of stuff home from work or the shops or whatever, you don't have to worry about getting it over the hills.

Joe

Erm, with all due respect, and unless you're planning on riding up walls, there shouldn't be much you shouldn't be able to ride up using 34×25 if you're even slightly fit.

Since you're going there, I don't think there's much you can't ride up with 39×23, but I reckon there are certainly climbs I'd feel a lot better after climbing on a lower gear, and probably do just as fast.

If 34×25 is your preferred ratio, you could use a 12-23 triple, so have a 30×23, which is a pretty similar low gear, but with a nice high gear for downhills, and very small gaps between gears so you can always get exactly the gear you want. It isn't always just about getting a lower gear. Looking at it, people saying not to be a triple wuss, but to fit a 27 cog to a compact, actually have a lower low gear than my 30 x 23 insanely low gear (and surely you spin out quicker on any decent descent?).

Joe