What phone is it?

Joe

We have one. It is only okay, not really very good. Nowhere near as good as previous ones that were cheap things attached to combi boilers.

The reason they are advising installing one could be because they a) cost twice as much and b)involve twice as much work to install , plumbing plus electrics rather than just plumbing (assuming you’re having a basin up there, so hot water is coming up anyway). More work for them and their mates.

Water pressure isn’t anything to do with how well an electric shower works, our water pressure is nice and high (bottom of hill, reservoir at the top of the hill). It is just how quick it heats up the water, as they only let water through when it is hot enough.

The most powerful ones (11kw+) are okay, but I don’t think our old house wiring is likely to take it!

The annoying thing is that it is a small house, one bathroom, with a good combi boiler, and fantastic water pressure in the bathroom, meaning that a clip on shower on the taps would be way more powerful than the current thing, let alone a proper thermostatic combi shower.

Joe

What software / hardware do you have to edit it with? A lot of editing software won’t work with HD videos, or if it does it is a right hassle to get it there.

Even if your editing software supports it (like Final Cut Pro), in everything except the latest premiere, it takes at least 2x the video length in time just to import any HD clips (ie. if you have an hour of film, it takes 2 hours to import).

If you don’t actually want to make edited videos out of the things you record, ie. you just want to play them back off the camera on your TV, HD is not such a hassle though.

Joe

I generally prefer to do it myself, however when we went to Morzine, we got a catered chalet thing, which was cheap enough that I’d have probably spent almost as much if we’d done self catering, and when you go out for a whole days riding, it is nice not to have to do anything at the end of it.

In terms of guiding, we didn’t really need it in that area, as it is well marked and mapped, and there are loads of people around to get trail knowledge off.

I’ve done mountaineering with guides though, and that was nice, lets you go places you couldn’t go on your own without more training/confidence/equipment than I have, like through high mountain passes in New Zealand.

Joe

I’ve had similar things, and fixed it by putting a little bit of air in, and dropping/bouncing the wheel on the tyre repeatedly.

Joe

if three people want a spur of the moment trip, hire a car.

Although it is worth knowing, that on many trains, you can get a ‘groupsave’ ticket, which makes it cheaper if there are 3 or 4 of you travelling together (I think it is roughly 3 or 4 people for the price of 2). It appears to be kept pretty secret, I only found out about it when we happened to get a friendly ticket collector who sold us one.

Joe

Our shower at work is a badly installed wet room. It had mushrooms growing in it at one point (literally, tiny little mushrooms). At the moment, it is sort of working, but the bits that seal the walls are peeling away from the real wall.

I would make very sure that whoever is installing one for you knows very well how to do it.

Joe

considering how long established the ‘expenses rules’ are I find it amazing that this is such hot news.

But how far they’d been allowed to bend / game / commit fraud using the rules wasn’t public knowledge due to them fighting as hard as possible to keep all expenses secret.

The MP’s expenses situation has been shite for a long time, and we all knew that.

No we didn’t. We didn’t have any idea how much these MPs were fiddling their expenses. People might have thought some fiddling was going on, but for it to be so widespread, and to involve quite such devious trickery, is pretty surprising.

In the US, they just publish all expenses claims as a matter of fact. People know that when they expense stuff, so they don’t take the piss.

After all, we all make use advantages that our employment offers us to a certain extent.

If we did it to the extent MPs have, the moment HMRC took a look at our companies accounts, we’d get a stonking big tax bill for unreasonable expenses, and/or put in jail for tax fraud.

Joe

If you’re doing 30 miles a day on it, you can probably do the London to Paris no problems. It is mostly flat right? Except the South Downs, which are pretty easy hills that is.

If it’s a charity ride, you’ll probably not be in a hurry right? Unless it’s a full on constant riding challenge, I wouldn’t worry too much. If it’s split into 4 or 5 days or some such thing, then I wouldn’t worry at all.

Clipless pedals might make a slight difference, but if you’re not racing why bother.

Joe

you can’t take a bike on the tram though if that makes a difference

Although it is only 6 and a bit miles of easy road riding, so I dunno why you’d bother with the tram.

Joe

If the scared of tubes thing is claustrophobia, London buses are great, and dirt cheap.

I’ve stayed in My Hotel Chelsea, which was nice, although might not be as fancy as you’re hoping for.

The Zetter is supposed to be quite a posh one, and is easy to get buses into the centre of town is close to lots of good art stuff, restaurants etc. although I’ve never stayed there.

Joe

hence you get artificially inflated salaries.

Are they actually more than commercial stations? Or US TV presenter salaries?

I’m guessing that newsreaders get paid quite a lot for their ability to say the right thing first time (news is still live isn’t it?) and still look natural. 99% of people, when stuck in front of a camera, they take half an hour to read a couple of sentences right.

Joe

Monthly at most.

Weekly = straight in the spam filter (or remove if you allow it)

I get a few things where they only send me email when there is something interesting, which seems to be 3 or 4 times a year. Which is better than the weekly same old rubbish from John Lewis etc.

Joe

an labour peer getting back at an overpaid bbc news presenter
wait a minute we pay her salary too!!

Hmm. I bet the BBC presenter doesn’t fiddle their expenses though. BBC expenses are pretty tight – for meals they get a max of £6 for lunch, £14 for dinner, including drinks etc. with receipts submitted, even if you’re eating out in Central London. Anything unreceipted is not paid.

Joe

Surely you’d need a big bag that hides the fact it is a bike, what with bikes being not allowed on most buses?

Joe

Christchurch

riding like this http://www.mountainbikingnewzealand.co.nz/2009/05/01/last-of-the-summer-mountain-biking-craigieburn/

It’s hardly a city though is it? And for ‘culture’, you have to like small NZ bands, artists etc. as nothing else ever comes there.

In England, Sheffield is the obvious place, although like all provincial cities, it doesn’t have the same level of culture as London, but you have to compromise that to get the outdoorsy stuff.

Personally, I gave up compromising, and am now living in Derbyshire (Belper to be exact). Yes I have to travel for any decent culture, but that was the same when I lived in Nottingham, and here my nearest decent ride starts approximately 10 minutes on a bike away.

Joe

Don’t choose anything that’s difficult to spell – either for the child her/himself, or for other people.

Or something that looks like a misspelling of a normal name – like ‘Jaycub’ or ‘Izaac’ or whatever. They’ll get six different spellings every time someone writes it down, all wrong. Plus it makes people think they have illiterate parents.

Joe

the NHS is formatted to treat things rather then prevent them

Huh, what about preventative medicine?

In many ways the NHS sucks, but compared to other health systems it is incredibly efficient. Particularly compared to systems involving private medical insurers (the US system that he loves so much costs roughly twice as much, and gets much worse outcomes, in addition to not covering a large percentage of the population at all).

Joe

1: 14 yrs
2: 0
3: 0

By the way, you can tell how to plug it in by reading the manual that came with the speakers. What you have is a 2 channel sound card.

If you want to make the subwoofer work, turn up the ‘bass’ dial.

Joe

Its ok. Panic over! We’ve found an adapter that does the trick. Only a couple of quid but we’ve had to order it from the states

If it’s just a 3.5mm jack splitter, then you’re wasting time / money. Just press the matrix button on the speakers, it will do exactly the same thing.

If it is a USB sound card, that would work. If it was a pre-amp that takes sp-dif and outputs 3xjack, that might work. It probably isn’t either of these if it is only a couple of quid, you’d be looking more in the 40 quid range for a sound card, and silly money for a preamp.

Joe

Unless it’s a DVD watching home cinema setup, or you’re producing film soundtracks, or it’s a really hardcore gaming setup, I’d take it back and buy a similarly priced set of 2 speakers. You’ll get better sound for the price, and less of a spaghetti nightmare with the wires (I guess that speaker set has about 10 wires in total?).

The only way to get value out of those speakers with a computer that doesn’t support surround by default is to buy an extra sound card that does surround output. I’m guessing it’s a laptop? Almost all desktops have decent sound outputs nowadays (sometimes on the back of the machine) and it’d be surprising if macs didn’t.

Joe

Can’t you connect it to a (wired) network, and telnet/ssh into ubuntu? Or even use the serial port if it has one (does linux have a terminal on the serial port?) and then alter the config files to tell it to use the other display?

Or access the ubuntu partition from windows (using something like this
http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2008/03/19/four-applications-for-accessing-ext3-partitions-from-windows/

Sometimes you can set which display to use for startup in the bios – but that might be hard to navigate to if it doesn’t show on the external screen.

Joe

Statistically, there are more headwinds than tailwinds. Wind slows you down if it is in front of you, or off to either side by up to about 100 degrees. If it is behind you, it only speeds you up if it is within about 80 degrees off from directly behind you.

I have a feeling the figures may vary slightly depending on your riding speed, but that is the general gist of it. Thus meaning you have roughly 55% chance of being slowed down by the wind.

Joe

The only hassle I’ve ever had with Gaelic, is the use of Gaelic place names on OS maps. I found that everyone who was born in the Aviemore area seemed to use English names for hills (White Lady, Shepherd etc.), which are no longer on the map, due to someone deciding to use Gaelic place names in order to respect their culture like.

Joe

When riding, mars / twix or snickers bars. Not much less healthy than the flapjack / muesli bars, and dirt cheap. Bananas, again pretty cheap.

Or if I really need a boost, buy a bag of skittles, eat one a minute. I’ve done a 20 mile off road slog when exhausted with the skittles.

When I stop on a ride, soreen or cake, or sandwiches if I can be bothered to make em.

I use energy drinks in races, long distance challenges, 100 milers etc. or when I’m in training for an event, but can’t see the point for normal riding, they only make a slight performance difference, and aren’t any healthier than just eating sweets, and cost a whole lot more.

Joe

so indie will be 60-70, hip-hop/R’n’B 90, dance 125, e

Indie 60 bpm? Dance 125? That’s a bit of a generalisation that ignores all the fast indie songs out there, and whilst a whole lot of boring trance music is 120bpm, there are so many genres of dance music done by people imaginative enough to move the tempo slider off the default setting.

Anyway, it sounds like you’re looking for something roughly 150-160bpm (or 75-80 bpm if you half the BPM you can just run left foot on the beat).

Although that manics track is roughly 124 bpm unless there’s a faster live version or something?

If you’re looking for indie music here are a few:
almost all the singles by Art Brut are 150-160bpm.
Pulp – Babies is about right.
Ash – Innocent Smile, Girl from Mars

Joe

There is a free program that takes all your mp3s and adds a tempo tag to the track that you can filter by in your media player /itunes etc. Can’t remember what it is called though – you could probably find it on google.

My mp3s are tagged and I have a 140bpm megamix on my phone at the moment – it’s amazing how varied a playlist you get.

Joe

Everyone picks an arbitrary point at which they stop eating animal derived things, on a scale with complete vegans at one end, and cannibals at the other.

99% of people pick a point somewhere away from the extremes, like being a vegetarian, or a meat eater. Unless you’re happy to eat dead people, or you abstain from all animal products you aren’t at either extreme so you’ve picked your own brand of ‘hypocrisy’.

Being a person who eats fish, but doesn’t eat meat, is just another point on the scale. It is annoying though when people like that refer to themselves as ‘vegetarians’, because it spreads the idea that stupid people sometimes have, that all vegetarians eat fish. Similarly when people who are basically vegan (dairy free etc.) refer to themselves as vegetarian, it can also cause confusion.

There are environmental and historical arguments for not eating meat. Historically (particularly in the ‘caveman’ days) we ate far less meat than we do now, and our bodies aren’t really designed to eat so much meat. Environmentally, meat takes far more energy (something like 10 times as much) to produce the same quantity of food (in terms of calories) than non-meat sources. I have a feeling that non-farmed fish are more environmentally friendly than farmed animals, meaning that this might be a reason someone would choose to eat fish but not meat.

Joe

does anyone know why DH race bikes aren’t carbon then?

Lahar[/url] have been making carbon DH bikes for ages.

I’ve seen their hardtail version and that looked very strong and appeared to have no problems being jumped off big drops.

Joe

I used to be quite good at trumpet playing, although I haven’t really played since I lived in the one bedroom flat in London – it isn’t a very easy to practice instrument when you have 3 neighbours with adjoining walls to hear it, and there’s only so much you want to play with a mute in.

I play piano, which I’m quite good at (classical and chords/vocal line accompaniment stuff). Penny whistle, which I am passable at playing folk tunes on, Ukulele, which I can play chords on, the tetris tune, and a few other little tunes. I also have a chinese flute, an ocarina, an end blown flute that I think is an Andean Quena, I can play Irish folk tunes on those as long as they are not too wide a range.

Oh and I own a violin, which I can play twinkle twinkle little star on and not much else.

Oh and I’ve been known to sing, although not in public for years.

Joe

I was watching the BBC forecasts on a daily basis too. Just as unreliable! I can only judge the weather on where I am, but this is not one week’s observance, i’ve been observing for years.

Observing all the forecasts, and recording how good they were? Or (I bet) just moaning about the times that they got it wrong?

The people who work at the met office on weather forecasting are paid bonuses based on forecast goodness, which is measured by actually looking at real performance, including when they get it right, and they have been getting better at it for years. That’s just a simple fact, and no amount of moaning about the times they get it wrong will change that.

Joe

If you want it for commuting and general riding, rather than purely for racing / club riding, then maybe think about something that can fit mudguards. Much as the carbon race bikes are fancy and all that, if you ride to work in winter you will look and feel like you pooed yourself by the time you get in. Race bikes are also a bit extreme to ride, which can put people off who aren’t used to road bikes, whereas for a lot of people a less racey position might be more comfortable and efficient.

Also pumps – either go for the wasteful but handy co2 cartridges, or get a frame-fit pump. Lots of roadies have mini pumps. These are generally just to show willing, and as an emergency thing to get a bit of air into a tyre so you can get home, inevitably if someone breaks down on a group ride, the frame fit pump will be the one people actually borrow and use. If you have your own one, it means it is easy to pump up tyres when you break down alone, and you can get enough air in to keep going on a ride, rather than a just get you home air pressure.

Joe

When I used to have long blonde hair and look a bit effeminate*, I often got dodgy geezers shouting ‘can I sniff your seat luv’.

Joe

*as opposed to my current intimidating he-man short hair look

The flat was only open last year I think – it was in one of the bits that are going to be demolished.

What he did was tank the whole place out, then pour in the liquid from the floor above, sort of like a giant version of the growing crystals on a paperclip etc. experiment people do at school.

Joe

It was quite amazingly pretty the flat thing that Hiorns did. The crystals were really hard and sharp, and the floor was all uneven, really weird, hard to describe how odd it was. In a derelict flat in Elephant & Castle, most of it you couldn’t really tell, but there were things like a bath and taps and things where you could see the underlying shape of the place.

I haven’t seen any of the other things in person though, so it is hard to tell what they are like. If it was a prize for how cool things look in a picture in a paper / on the net, it’d be a shoo-in.

Joe

I think this is meant to be about household income and outgoings that you have control over – rent and mortgage are more or less fixed costs whereas the others are variable costs.

Yep, and they’re surely strongly correlated to household income as well, meaning for this kind of comparison there isn’t a massive point in asking you that if you’ve already been asked how much you earn.

Joe

as it stands i earn the “average” (presuming the average income is two people so presumably i’m on twice the average?)

Average will be over all households (or possibly all working households) – ie. some have one, some have two earners. Last I saw the average individual salary is somewhere in the low 20,000s or high teens, household about 30k.

but my drinking/goign out is twice the average as well, so i have the beer consumption of 4 people? And if it is average for 2 people, how exactly do you squeeze 2 meals and drinks out of £26?

Maybe not everyone goes out for a meal every week? Or they go to Wetherspoons or similar cheap places – 2 meals for about £7, plus beer from £1 a pint, for £26 you could get 4 meals + 10 pints, which is surely enough for a family meal out, let alone 2 people? There are loads of chain places, Pizza Express, Pizza Hut etc. you could easily get 2 meals + drinks for £26. They’re just not the sort of places people earning a lot tend to hang out.

Personally I spend well below average, but that is mainly because we were both PhD students until last year, so we have suddenly doubled our incomes.

Joe

It is weird that I think this, because I’m a bit anti rings in general, but the idea of giving someone a ring that is going spare because your mum got divorced seems a bit unromantic. Although I guess I wouldn’t think it was strange to buy a second hand / ‘vintage’ ring from a shop, and I guess they get there for exactly the same reasons (and are worth apparently about 10% of the price you’d pay for them new).

Joe

If you get a schwalbe tube, they come with a special nut that has a little ridge on it so it fits nicely in a schraeder hole.

Joe