58%. But then, I think most people would fail the driving theory test if they'd never read the highway code & done no revision on it. I imagine this is just a test to check that people have read the book carefully, which makes sense.

Some of it is pointless statistics, but a lot of things are things you just would know if you live here, like when to send your kids to school & when the school terms are, that you have to pay for uniform (the full information book surely includes an idea of when school terms are in addition to the total number of weeks), but it would be jolly useful to know to integrate here.

Similarly, the stuff about the EU is the sort of thing people here should know (though I'm guess most people in the UK don't – I only know about it thanks to being married to an EU law lecturer), because it does affect us all, and it would be useful to have an idea of what the heck it is, rather than the current completely uninformed debate where a lot of people are basically pro-Europe because they like French cheese and wine and foreign holidays and feel it is a nice shiny thing to be, or anti Europe because they are a bit racist and don't like funny foreign things.

The question about what to send in with a job, that's jolly useful in ensuring that anyone coming over here who wants to work is at least applying for jobs in the right way. It's an odd thing that you wouldn't think is different in other countries, but in many countries they do things in quite different ways.

And the thing about free prescriptions is surely a useful part of our health service – not knowing that when you're pregnant you can get free medicine could lead to people not getting medicine that they need, and ending up costing the NHS far more when it becomes an emergency. If you're coming from a country where they routinely charge for everything, the preventative medicine agenda over here may be alien to you (for example if you come from the USA, people there are very very wary of going to the doctors ever, as even with insurance it can cost you money. Or things like calling an ambulance – that can cost you $4000 before you even get to the hospital – even with insurance you have to hope they take you to a hospital covered by your plan or else you're screwed).

There are a few wacky things in there – like dates people were allowed to divorce. Dunno what they help, although I've not read the booklet.

Joe

Mine is sort of grey. Got that way after about 3 rides (quite muddy ones mind).

Joe

Is it just me, or is that article full of phrases like 'Mainstream media' that are just catchwords of crazy US right wing conspiracy theorists? i.e. about as reliable as fox news?

Joe

I went from a job in London doing difficult stuff, to a job in Nottingham doing boring stuff. Was a complete nightmare. Now I'm in Academia, doing difficult stuff again.

Although having said that, getting paid lots of money and working strictly 9-5 is a very good thing for bike fitness.

Joe

http://software.aziraphal.com/Metronome.php will probably work on your phone (assuming you have a usb cable to get the software onto the phone).

I have a somewhat quicker to use piece of metronome software that I wrote (with big visible digits, so you don't need to squint at a tiny screen) but I don't know if it'll work on your phone (and I don't have it handy right now).

Joe

What mobile phone do you have – lots of metronome programs for phones, and you can stick it on the bars so you can easily change the tempo.

Or, if you know what the tempos are you want, you could record a load of clicks into an mp3 using a sequencer program on your computer and play it back on your mp3 player / computer or something.

Joe

I have wooly socks with sheep on (called wooly booly I think).

They are a bit of a revelation compared to waterproof socks I had previously, as you stay warm when it gets wet, whereas all the waterproof socks I ever had were great for a few months, but then started letting water in, which then gets silly cold, and never gets out of the socks until you take them off. I always wore the trousers over them too, and didn't wash them wrong.

Joe

UK games won't work on US wii.

Did we the tax payer pay for the making of OS maps

Or did we the map buying public pay for OS maps?

Yes, no.

Basically paper maps for outdoors people are just a small part of their licensing of the data. Much of their money comes from charging companies (and other bits of government) masses of money to use their data. At a ridiculously high cost.

Joe

Like a lot of major towns in Belgium, Netherlands & Denmark?

Although you'll notice that some of the research that found cycle lanes to be more dangerous than riding on the road was actually in the Netherlands. When they were proposing forcing people on bikes to use cycle lanes if available – which they in the end decided not to do, given the evidence that it was more dangerous to use cycle paths than roads even in the bike friendly Netherlands.

Its not "cycle lanes bad" its "badly designed roads bad" and that includes badly designed cyclepaths.

Well designed roads and cyclepaths / lanes could easily improve safety at little or no cost.

Is that really true – if they designed places with cyclist priority, ie. designing the cyclepaths before the roads, then maybe they could do things better, but that would require zillions of pounds, and would generally only work in new towns. Otherwise they'll still have the problem that people on cycle-paths crossing side roads / junctions are way less safe than people on the road riding past the side road.

Joe

Be careful with breaststroke. Well known bad knee causer if done badly or too hard.

If anything, your knee support will float a bit, but I doubt you'll notice it.

Joe

Lumacy which retails at 150 quid

Isn't that the people who are importing this light that costs £50, and marking up the price by 200% to sell in bike shops (I think they called their lights Leddite?)

If so, do they just stick a UK plug on it, and add £100? Or are there more upgrades included? The pictures of it on je-james look identical to the pictures on deal extreme. £100 sounds like quite a bit extra just so that you get the light a week faster (and presumably have a UK warranty?).

Joe

Oh and obviously the Nintendo DS is a far better portable game system, but you appear to want particular games that are Playstation only, so that knowledge probably isn't any use to you.

Joe

Go = no second hand games and no cheap games in shops.

Assuming you don't pirate all your games, that could make a massive difference in the amount you spend, at least until games completely stop coming out on disc. You're basically forced to buy games at the price Sony charge for them.

Joe

actually, capacitance on the cable will hack away at the trailing and leading edges of the waveform,(you're not actually sending 0's and 1's, it's a nominally square wave that represents 0's and 1's, being sent in an analogue format.) making it less square and eventually it will begin to look like an analogue wave if is enough capacitance is introduced,

Yeah, but I bet you'd need a blooming long cable before you got to a level where the edges were actually not clear enough so that you actually got data loss. We have 50m cable runs for gigabit ethernet, and I can tell you they don't use super-fancy gold plated connectors on the end of those, you chop the ends and crimp on plastic jobbies every time. Okay the data rate is about a 3rd or 4th of 1080p video, but I'm betting at least for 5 metres of so, you could use pretty much any old junk as long as the ends stay on.

You'd also know if you had interference – error correction in video generally is pretty poor.

Joe

offering a new course, for which there maybe genuine employer demand

If employers want job training, then they should pay for training. I know typical employer practice in this country is to totally avoid spending any money on training or development of staff, hence the way everyone I know (in computer programming) works at a company for 3 years or so, then moves on to a new job, rather than developing their career in a single job over several years.

If employers really want to support the creation of a new and useful academic subject, they should fund research into it, or develop labs or departments doing it. For example, with Computer Science a lot of the most interesting early research work was done by corporate research and development labs, as well as in physics / maths type departments at universities, a lot of work was funded with the help of external partners such as companies and the military. What has developed now is a subject that is a proper university subject, where people learn skills that are applicable to a wide range of areas of employment, rather than a pointlessly overspecialised thing that would have happened if they'd have let employers design and write the university courses straight off (anyone who has done CCNA / MCSE certificates etc. knows what that would look like, and what a waste of time it would be).

Joe

My kid finally went for an Optometry degree, she had been thinking about that for a while and although her main subject is maths, she thought that it was a wiser choice for future employment

That's a crazy reason to make that choice. It might be an interesting thing to do (in which case well worth choosing as a degree for purely that reason), but maths is surely a way better choice from employment terms – if you've got a maths degree from a good university there are thousands of jobs you can do, ex-maths people I know are doing engineering, science, computer programming, insurance, banking, research, teaching, experimental biology, one of them even did a medical conversion afterwards and is now a doctor, maths is a degree with access to thousands of different jobs, whereas a degree in optometrics is going to qualify you for a few variations on basically one job, which will probably be very competitive, if there are loads of graduates out there with such a specialised degree.

How many Egyptologists can they want

You (and lots of the other people posting on here) are missing the point of a degree – a degree isn't just training for a single job, particularly things like egyptology / history and stuff like that. It's training in analytical skills that could be useful for many jobs. I've known a few people with history, geography, English degrees etc. and whilst they haven't found jobs anywhere near as easy to get as people I know with maths or computer science degrees, they've all ended up getting jobs, often in things only slightly related to their original field, but which use some of the skills that they developed during their degree work.

Joe

on that map does it follow roads and then cross fields? put it on satellite view but cant quite tell. looks nice and green though

Oh yeah, you're probably out riding now, but just for future reference, if you're not originally from the UK, you might not know about Ordnance Survey maps – click the 'swap map sizes' button in bikehike, and you can see it in a topographical map with the details of what the heck you're riding over, where paths are etc. Much more useful than the google map. No fields – it is all on tracks (which you can see on the OS map).

Also, one thing about the printed route above – where you come down the Chevin, towards the end, you should turn sharp left down the hill where there is a sign marked 'public bridleway' (it is a narrow lane between two bits of the golf course), not go straight on down – then you get to ride the most fun bit of downhill, whereas if you go straight, you get that downhill on a boring road. They also come into the Chevin the less fun way, although to be fair to them, the fun way is a footpath, and is pretty hard to ride. (you can sort of see it at 3:42 in this video, although the handheld camerawork makes it a bit hard to see, sorry. The turnoff can be seen at 3:00 in the video, where people are stopped).

Joe

I think people appreciated free drink more than a pretentious sit down meal.

I think nice drink and good food is what I've appreciated most at weddings. Apart from the company and who's wedding it was, which obviously makes the most difference, but is kind of fixed!

I've been to weddings where the reception was in parents' (large) houses, in castles, by the sea (in New Zealand, and in Northumberland), in business hotels, in country houses, and in local village hall type places. I think the venue itself made next to no difference to how enjoyable it was, I've enjoyed much more ones where the venue was a bit bland, but the food and drink were plentiful and good, to ones in amazing places but with boring food, cheap nasty wine, and not enough pudding.

I think that is kind of what we tried to do – we didn't really skimp much, but particularly not on the food and drink. I think key to that was getting somewhere that we could buy the drink without a massive markup (I think they charged us £2 per bottle corkage on top of the majestic trade price or something not outrageous), so we could have good wine, and choose wine to go with each course. We kind of lucked out on the whole thing due to personal connections, which also meant we found some lovely local people to cater for us who cooked it all fresh from good quality ingredients, which was great.

But I think everyone has their own priorities, and for most people food and drink is less of a priority / less something that they are really interested in than other things – or else most of the whole wedding venue places would never work, even if the venue is 'good value', whatever that means, you often end up getting screwed on the quality of the food and drink.

I guess also, thinking about it, as long as you ensure there is a decent quantity of food, and wine keeps flowing all through the night, probably you'll have an awesome day whatever the quality of things is.

Joe

Also, back on topic, it seems pretty stupid to only enjoy riding downhill, if you ride in the UK (and aren't using uplift). You'll spend 3 times as much time going uphill, you might as well get fit enough to enjoy that part of the ride (I'm not saying that uplift assisted downhill isn't hard, but just riding xc and walking the ups is pretty obviously way easier than riding it all).

I've never met anyone who didn't enjoy riding uphill for any reason other than because they were unfit. I have been riding with seriously good downhillers on xc rides, and they completely wasted me on the uphills – one of the most crazy downhill guys I've met is someone who lives in Vancouver, and rides up the mountains there to keep himself in shape & for the challenge of it. I always think it is rubbish downhillers who hate riding uphill – the good ones will spend too much time in training riding the uphills to hate it.

Joe

As for North America having less trails than the UK, my answer to that is: Are you on crack?

Have you not noticed all the bridleways (and errrm footpaths) on all the OS maps.

We have absolutely zillions of miles of legal trails. America, with no right of way network has way less. It also has massive areas of mountains and forests where bikes are completely prohibited (national parks).

I've ridden with US riders, and it is very cool when you visit, but they often seem to have very limited local trail networks, and always have to be driving to ride, which isn't so cool compared to our rights of way. When you ride with them in the UK, they are always amazed when you are going across what is obviously people's land, and don't really understand why on earth the landowner doesn't just chuck you off.

I've met people who were very proud that their large city has 50 miles of legal biking trails. When even my small town of 20,000 people has more tnan that within easy riding distance (and way more if you include certain footpaths / forestry stuff that is a grey area and pretty much everyone rides).

Our trails are also cooler in that they often go to places – for example I can ride from home to work (about 20 miles), with about 3 miles of road, a few miles of boring boring cycle path, and loads of proper off road tracks, almost 100% legally. You don't have the same thing when you're limited to a relatively small set of recreational trails in the middle of nowhere.

The USA is a great place to go on holiday for riding mind – they have some very well developed trails, you don't tend to need to navigate, and they have some pretty big mountains.

Same for New Zealand – was fun working there for 6 months, but would be a pain having only those trails to ride forever, not having the same ability to explore further on rides and find new trails, or to travel places off road.

Joe

If you can get out to the North, this is a great little loop, from Belper. Easy to do in 2 hours.

http://www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=24048

It is pretty low on mud too compared to the riding in the woods. The top of the Chevin is a bit mucky, but nothing you can't ride through. Oh and actually, the first off road climb, I would just skip it and go up Belper Lane – bits of it are pretty minging at the moment.

You'd need to be happy with rocks and roots, I dunno what cross bikes are like on technical stuff.

Or if you want a fun, pretty easy ride, start from Milford, and just ride the chevin. This would certainly be fine on the cross bike, and is a nice quick loop.

http://www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php?id=25868

If you are coming by bike, Milford / Belper are about 30 minutes ride north of Derby on the A6.

Joe

I've been using pretty basic cateyes for years, and never had one die due to weather.

Due to smacking them onto rocks, now that is another matter.

I've got mudguards, which I guess protect the lights from a lot of the scum and wet, if you haven't, maybe that's why your lights are dead? (commuting in this weather with mudguards is great – I just got in, and whilst my top half was a bit damp, my trousers were pretty dry, they dried off in 5 minutes, despite the roads being really wet (and it raining on me for an hour).

Joe

Buffalo:

Between you and the wilderness

http://www.needlesports.com/acatalog/Mail_Order_Buffalo_41.html

They make a load of outdoor clothes that are based on the idea that breathable waterproofs that still work when you are doing hard exercise don't exist. So instead, they make things that keep you warm when wet, breathe very well and dry very quickly. Designed to be worn without base layers or other layers and all that gubbins. People I know who have them (and use them for winter climbing etc) absolutely swear by them. They are kind of pricey, although not as pricey as the more expensive goretex and event jackets.

Joe

I've got several polartec fleeces.

Next to no difference between fancy berghaus ones and TK-Maxx ones.

If you aren't fussed about particular colour or whatever, TK Maxx almost always have some in, and they are often branded ones for millets prices.

Joe

what about inheritance tax, though? I'd rennovate & rent.

Unless it is in the South East, it might well be under the threshold anyway. If it is over the threshold, then you have to pay it anyway, whether or not you rent it out surely, making it way more sensible to sell if you're already short of cash?

Joe

Personnel opinion is that it will end up like skiing, DH being normal and a few doing XC, at least in the UK. There seems to be an anti work ethic in UK sport.

I think that is just rubbish. And I dunno where you get the wacky idea that there is an "anti-work ethic in UK sport" from?

If you look at the USA, in quite a few places it is a bit like this, with DH being normal, because they have lifts and all that stuff, and a culture of shuttling other trails, and riders who say "I prefer downhill, I don't want to ride uphill, as it tires me out for the downhill sections", whilst really meaning "I'm too unfit to ride the uphills".

But in the UK, the terrain just isn't suited to it – there are too many trails (way way more trails than in the USA), so people are spread out, meaning it isn't obvious which ones to uplift, secondly, in most places the hills aren't that big, so the downhills are relatively short, meaning to get a decent ride in, you need to go uphill as well to get to the next bit of downhill.

I reckon people get this idea, because they pass a lot of people walking whilst riding on the uphill. But if you think about it, you are only going to pass people who are walking (or at least you will pass far more of them than you will people riding), because of your relative speed being different.

I pushed up a hill the other day, although I think it was mainly lack of bike control skill – I couldn't get it so it had traction at the back yet kept the front wheel down. It was jolly steep though, hard to walk up.

Joe

I'd just sell it.

I don't know how much things have changed since early this year, but at that point we were advised by a surveyor (and professional house renovator) relative that the amount extra a done up house costs compared to a heap is way way less than the amount it would cost to do a house up – i.e. you spend £20k on doing up, gets you about £10k extra price.

At that point, it was only worth doing if a)you do a lot of the work yourself and don't value your time very much, b)you are involved in the building trade and have local contacts, so you get decent material prices and good rates on the work that needs a professional.

So, for someone buying, it makes sense to buy a nicely done up house (assuming it is done up to your taste), but for someone selling, you might as well just flog it as is.

Bathrooms and kitchens are the worst ones too, as people have particular ideas of how they want them, if you stick something in, chances are whoever moves in next will want to rip it out.

Joe

The Satmap does look good but I hear you can't use Memory map with it? I now have a reasonably comprehensive memory map collection so keen to get something i can us them with.

The only thing that you can use memory map maps on the device itself is a windows mobile PDA. None of the garmins will load the actual maps on, so you end up having to buy the maps again even for the fancy ones (assuming you want maps on the device).

Joe

Would the same argument apply if you were photographing something sensitive, such as a power station or MI6 HQ?

I've been involved in a photoshoot at Vauxhall Bridge. It took about 30 seconds of setting up tripods etc. before a rather burly man came out of MI6 to suggest that a)we might like to take the pictures on the other side of the road (which was fine for what we were doing), and b)we don't take any close ups of people passing by (who might be going into the MI6 building). It was very much asking us not telling us mind.

They were way less sensitive than many security guard types – were fine with us taking pictures as long as we weren't taking snaps of all the people who work for MI6.

Joe

If it's a private car park, they probably can tell you what to do, it isn't really a public place.

Joe

DS = a portable games machine for playing portable games.

PSP = a handheld thing to play games that are sort of like PS2 games.

The DS has loads of great games designed for it, designed to be played anywhere, and designed for a quick go, whereas the PSP games seem more like console games stuck onto a portable machine, they haven't really thought about how people use portables, or done anything innovative with the interface.

Also, the newest PSP has made the stupidest ever design decision of only allowing games to be bought as downloads – meaning no second hand games, whereas DS games you can almost always get for a tenner 2nd hand.

For children it's a no brainer – almost all the kid targeted games are DS only nowadays (like the dog / cat / sims style ones they spend hours on). To be honest, if you're a busyish adult, it's a no brainer too – full sized console games are just too big of a time sink compared to a quick hit of DS.

I was in Smiths last year just after Christmas – saw people returning PSPs that they'd bought for their children who wanted a DS, they'd thought it was more expensive and made by Sony, so it must be better.

Joe

I run it on a N95, it is great on that. I imagine on a 5800 it is probably even better.

The N95 is sort of a bit resilient, but if it really is wet, you need it inside some kind of waterproof cover. I would avoid the N96, they are not as good at not breaking as the N95 was.

The other alternative is to run it on some old phone that you can pick up cheap, using an external bluetooth GPS. Something like a Nokia 6630 or similar, cost you £30 for the phone and another £20-£30 for the GPS (the fancy modern phones with built in GPS will either be £200 – £300 on pay as you go, or you'll need a £30 a month contract).

Joe

Cycling up hills would be at the bottom of this list.

Nowhere. Surely all the best riding in the UK involves riding up big hills. There are a couple of places where you could uplift on a regular basis, but you'd be missing 99% of the best riding if you're purely downhilling.

Joe

I think the answer is yes, it does double.

Joe

But if i am looking as far as Sheffield, then i may also be tempted to look at places like Matlock.

Even as someone with a silly commute, Sheffield to Mansfield is a bit too far for a bike commute I reckon – 20 miles by the shortest route at least.

Chesterfield is doable – 14 miles each way.

Matlock would be pushing it – 16 miles. Ambergate is possibly slightly closer, although whilst it has okay trains, it'd be a bit of a pain of a place to live without a car.

Personally, I'd either go towards Nottingham (although a)it is a pain to get out to the Peak District if you don't have a car and b)you'd want to live somewhere expensive, especially if you have nice bikes, or an aversion to being mugged), or towards Chesterfield / Matlock. Going west, you'll get to the better riding – at either Matlock or Chesterfield, you can bike into the Peak District from home, and even if you were 4 or 5 miles east of there, you could still get some riding in. Although looking at likely decent sized towns, I can't really see anywhere nice around there till you hit Matlock / Ambergate / Belper or Chesterfield to the N.

I wouldn't go east, because then you're getting into proper Nottinghamshire, where the riding is not as good by far.

If you don't have a car, the train lines are basically the Mansfield -> Nottingham one (branch line, okay service), the Chesterfield line (mainline trains from London), or the Matlock line (branch line). From Mansfield or those trains, you have no useful links for biking, which is a pain, whereas if you live within easy riding distance of either a station on the Matlock line, or Chesterfield, you can get trains to nice riding places quite easily.

Joe

Don't run them down. Running them right down (past where the lights stop working well) is bad for them. Whatever you do, don't leave them on for 24 hours like Roddy describes, you risk breaking the battery completely.

Best thing is just to charge them back up. Basically, they have a limited number of charging cycles, and half a charge only uses half a charging cycle.

The only complicated thing with li-ion batteries is that if you're leaving them for a long time, it is best to leave them at about half charge, as the batteries last longer that way.

Joe

Unless you have a funny shaped helmet where the vents don't point forwards, you'd surely be better off using velcro zip ties or similar to attach it. Lower down on the helmet means you won't catch it on things, and it just feels a lot more secure than a proper mount. On my helmet it is easy to adjust the up/down angle, just by mounting it further back on the vent.

Joe

Think i'll give the open office a go then, as I asked above, anyone had any compatability problems with Power Point between MS and Open office (Mac versions)

Yes. Lots of problems with Power Point vs Presenter (I think that's what the OO thing is called).

Things work fine if you use just Power Point, or just Open Office Presenter, but the moment you start transferring things from one to the other, things break.

It is particularly bad if you use videos, web links etc, but even things like images sometimes go a bit wobbly.

If you need to view presentations from Presenter on someone else's PC, best way is to save as a PDF, although obviously not a goer if you have video / audio.

Open office writer / word compatibility is somewhat better, although if you do anything cunning with formatting, or are particularly tight for space, you need to open things up in Word and check that it has the right number of pages, as sometimes things format very slightly differently. Also if you are using other people's templates (we have to do it for publications) be careful, as sometimes it can change them slightly, meaning it gets rejected by the person you send it to and causes a whole load of hassle.

If she is at college, then office is only £40, and you get the full version too, with all the bits. Although it occurs to me, I don't know if they do a mac version on that deal, probably do…

http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theultimatesteal-uk/default.aspx

Joe

Several people I know have internet radios. If you have wi-fi, they might be worth thinking of – similar signal quality to DAB, but a whole load more stations (I think they have the usual BBC ones too).

Joe