Firstly and I think most importantly I forced myself to ride very slowly when I felt at all tired. This took some getting used to because at first it felt comedy slow but it didn’t add that much time onto my commute. This meant that the next day I felt recharged.

ignore all the tough men on this thread. Google for ‘overtraining’ lots of articles about this topic. You don’t need to be a full time athlete to overtrain, and your symptoms are classic signs of overtraining.

These two are both kind of right. If you treat every ride to work as a training ride, you will get knackered and get what is happening to you. But 7 miles is short enough that it doesn’t have to be a training ride, you can just pootle it, it’ll take 5 minutes longer, and you won’t feel like you’ve done any exercise at all.

When I am riding 5 days a week, I do Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays hard rides, and Tuesday, Thursday relaxed rides. I also tend to ride hard into work, and not too hard on the way back. Currently I do a 16 mile each way / 32 mile round trip across Derbyshire hills. It is really surprising how easy it is to ride my commute slowly in 1:15, compared to riding it in a hurry in 58 minutes, riding fast is way more mentally tiring too, you keep having to remind yourself to go quick.

Best thing about my commute is that 1.5 miles from home I get to the top of the hill, and it’s pretty much flat out downhill from there, really nice way just to spin your legs out and warm down. The hill works nicely as a warm up in the morning too.

Joe

Find someone who sells boxes of spokes rather than individual spokes, £100 for a box of 100 spokes is not right.

How big is the difference in length on the two sides? Usually you can get away with about 2mm or so out.

Or just use plain gauge DT spokes from Chain Reaction. I’ve had to do that with small wheels before, and the wheels seem fine. They do em in pretty much any length.

Joe

I just submitted, so i know what you mean about hard working. Full time jobs are nothing like the same hassle, realistically full time jobs involve about 5 hours of work a day and at least with kids you have something to take your mind off the work, rather than the ever present PhD.

I found not working at home and riding in to work to write meant i at least got some exercise. Oh, and i went riding even in the rain – if you’ve got limited time, why waste it by missing a ride just because you’ll be uncomfortable for the first 5 minutes until you warm up?

Joe

Aren’t there nicer not brand new houses for a lot less money in bramcote / chillwell / wollaton / beeston? With an older house you could avoid all the hassles with new builds and the small rooms compared to older houses.

Or are they doing some insane cheap deal to get the stock off their books?

0.0001% chance of false positive which is about 1 in a million if my maths is right???

Isn’t it 0.0001% chance of two people having matching DNA under the test. Meaning that given a population of 50 million, there are 49 other people with the same DNA, and suddenly that 1 in a million doesn’t sound so good? (the actually figures are probably not quite so bad, probably more like 10 other people, but even so, it demonstrates why they couldn’t just rely on a database).

Joe

It would be impossible for the prosecution to argue that the DNA evidence was conclusive if the defence could show that it also matched 30 other people in the database.

Yes, because defence lawyers are often allowed to perform DNA searches? Or do you just mean statistically using bayes theorem. The prosecution will still say ‘there is a 1 in a million chance that this DNA wasn’t from you’ or something roughly factual but ignoring the populations involved, surely, and it’s hard to argue against that kind of stuff.

Joe

Anyone genuinely know what degree of false positives that there are? Presumably, that fact makes it easy to defend a case for your brief and the fact that your DNA is found at a crime scene does not automatically make you guilty, especially if you can validate a reason for being there, so what other reason?

It’s very hard to defend a case based on DNA evidence statistics, as it is very hard to put across Bayes’ theorem in court in such a way that juries and judges can understand it (even if you could get your own lawyer to understand it). Gerd Gigerenzer’s has a good bit about exactly this (and is a fascinating read anyway).

Joe

The North Downs is one of the most easy to access by train riding areas in the country.

If you’re coming from London, Dorking or Box Hill are the best stations, good trains, and you can ride off road from about 1/2 a mile from the station if you want, or do a 3 mileish road blast to the most popular trails. Holmwood is very good, but doesn’t have many trains. Gomshall is also bang in the middle of the trails, but again, you usually have to change trains to get there, meaning it’s quicker to ride from Dorking or Box Hill.

I believe you can ride out from Guildford too if you’re coming from Hampshire or somewhere, although I don’t really know that end.

Joe

103 miles on a unicycle from Nottingham to Skegness in a not very direct route), 104 on the bike, a loop around Nottingham, just to see how hard it was to do 100 miles on a road bike without any training (not very as it turns out).

Joe

I am just about to submit mine (hopefully in a couple of hours). It is called “Creating Illusion in Computer Aided Performance”.

During my PhD, I’ve juggled in various places round the world, ridden roller coasters, done magic tricks, controlled a bucking bronco ride, created art installations, done technical work on some high profile performances and met lots of really interesting people.

I also really enjoy thinking about stuff, writing about it, and doing presentations on it, which is important, as whatever subject you do, you’ll have to do that end of things too.

I have a job too, working as a researcher, it doesn’t pay as well as normal computer programming, but I get to play with more fun stuff, and there is a lot of scope for developing things myself, rather than just adding features other people have thought up to other people’s software.

I am the idiot in the black boiler suit making the roller coaster stuff on here all work
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jf9lm/Blue_Peter_25_03_2009/

Some other stuff I’ve done
http://www.mrl.nott.ac.uk/~jqm/blog/

You do have to think what you’re doing is the most exciting thing in the world, as otherwise it can be hard to motivate yourself to do it, and you’ll have to compete with people for who it is super-exciting.

Joe

Long Eaton is a sh*t hole with no character and no good riding nearby. Whatever you do, don’t get dragged in to living there. It’s just a commuter suburb of Nottingham, with nothing to recommend it other than you get a slightly bigger house, and you are jolly near to a 24 hour ASDA. It’s a horrible Barrat homes non-place (except for the dodgy council estate), and the countryside directly around it is boring and muddy all winter (oh and flat too). The only thing to recommend it is that you pay slightly less for your beer before you have the fight on a saturday night, and if you drive it is very convenient for the M1 for getting yourself anywhere other than Long Eaton.

If you were to live that far out of Derby, you might as well rent somewhere nice that is a proper town like Belper, with good riding pretty much from the door, and still good public transport, than a pointless grey suburb where you have to take trains or ride 10 miles to get to any good off road. Although Belper is not so well suited for Nottingham (it has direct trains, but not late at night).

To be honest though if I was a proper lazy student, I’d be looking at close in to Derby, for easy getting home after late night drinking, and generally being good for socialising with other people on the course. If you don’t sign a new lease at the end of the first year, and go onto a rolling contract, you can always move pretty easily if you need to.

Joe

Lock bumping is trivially easy as long as they have the blanks, which you can buy on ebay. It is not like picking a lock, in that it requires basically no skill, and takes only as much time as it takes to unlock a door normally.

It would be a right hassle if someone did you this way, as unless they left obvious marks, and you got forensics in to look at them, it would look to the insurance company like you left the door unlocked.

But I don’t think it is at all common currently, or else we’d be hearing about it in the press, in things that aren’t releases from anti lock bumping companies, and insurance companies would be stipulating changing of locks. You do have to carry a bunch of dodgy bump keys, one for each type of lock (like blank keys but with special ridges cut on them), which is a bit of a hassle (and counts as going equipped if you get caught).

I thought that greasing locks made them easier to bump, but maybe not if it is very thick grease they are selling.

Joe

In a similar situation in my skint student days I learnt Fortran from scratch in a couple of days for an interview once and got the job. Most computer stuff you can easily learn enough in a weekend to be able to at least program whatever silly thing they ask you in the interview.

Although since discovering what a joy it isn’t to have a job programming in Fortran on a super-computer that doesn’t even have a proper text editor, I’ve only gone for jobs since when I knew it wasn’t going to be complete dullsville if I got the job.

I didn’t actually lie about anything to get that one though, just applied for the job, said to the first person that I could do the job (which was true, and all they asked), and then made sure I had some knowledge of Fortran by the interview.

Joe

We have a decent opposition. The Conservative Party. See scrapping of ID cards, etc.

Scrapping ID cards – which they supported originally, and have only changed because they suddenly decided it’d be a vote winner.

Voted in favour of the Iraq war.

Will want to do even more crazy monopoly creating privatisations of the NHS, Schools etc. Are in favour of making our hospital system more like the insanely bureaucratic US one (where they have significantly worse health outcomes than here, despite spending far greater amounts of money on healthcare per person, and a large percentage of the population not getting any ongoing healthcare.)

So there’s the Conservatives, with crazy right wing business-first policies which are just an extension of the whole Blairite agenda (which I guess was itself an extension of the Thatcherite agenda), which are exactly what has got us into this economic mess at the moment.

Then Labour – ignoring almost everyone about Iraq, taking us to war based on a bunch of lies, continuing to try and avoid an inquiry about it.

Or Lib Dems, some nice policies, it is nice that they are liberal on things like drugs, it is nice that they voted against Iraq, and unlike the other parties, they do appear to have principles, but they do sometimes seem a bit pie in the sky policy wise.

I have no idea who I’ll vote for next time.

Joe

yeah looks like derby is going to win out on logistics alone. more local riding is a definite bonus plus we just had a look at flat rent prices, wayyyy! much cheaper than madrid [:)]

I wouldn’t rent a flat unless you really love apartments for their own sake – if it’s anything like Nottingham, 2 or 3 bed houses just a bit outside the centre are cheaper than flats in the centre, and buses / biking / walking into town is easy enough. Plus a lot of the modern flats are in ghost-town type blocks with only a few people living in them, the rest being failed buy to lets.

Joe

I think GrahamS sums it up best. FWIW, I haven’t edited the iPhone sign-off, partly ‘cos I’m too lazy, partly so that people are aware that I’m not sat at a computer, so an immediate answer will probably not be forthcoming. I had a Nokia N95 prior to the iPhone, and frankly it sucked in just about every area. Battery life is woeful, the GPS is virtually useless, web browsing is painful, the camera is almost useless… I could go on. At the moment I’ve got apps that allow me to track routes with the GPS, get up to date weather, check movie times, get tv schedules and set-up my sky+ box, get info from Wiki, read any of the hundred or so ebooks I have on disc, browse STW and contribute to the forum, listen to music, take photos and tweak them on the phone…

This is an example exactly what is clever about the iPhone. If a techy person has an N95, they can upgrade the firmware, which fixes the battery life / gps issues listed above, and can download software to do all these things you’re talking about, in some aspects it can even be slightly better than the iPhone (although web browsing is not quite as good). But a non-technical person like you, you’ll play a little bit, discover it is fiddly to get started, and not get anywhere. Whereas with the iPhone, even a non-techy person can use all the features.

The depressing thing is that so many of the problems with nokia user interface stuff would be so easy to fix, if they just had one or two good UI designers involved in designing a UI for a phone, rather than seperately designed UIs for each application on a phone.

Joe

Focussed Market Penetration

Identified the German market as under performing so focussed on the top companies in the key business verticals.

Moved the market from one low end client to near market dominance within the top companies displacing the main rival from the key accounts.

Personal involvement in securing deals with the top automotive manufacturer, top chemical company, top retailer and top bank within Germany

That possibly makes sense if you’re in sales, or only applying for jobs where MBA jargon will be easy for people to understand. The third para is clear what it means, but the first two? The ‘key business verticals’, what the heck is that? The second paragraph – ‘moved the market’, that’s more MBAese, how about ‘Grew our market share from one small client to gain market dominance within the top companies, displacing our main rival from these key accounts’. In English, but should also make sense to MBAs. The benefit of using English is that your CV often has to go through people who don’t understand marketing / business jargon (or programming jargon in my case), so it means you have more chance of getting past the first round of filtering.

Personally, I just write plain clear English, and it does have I in it. Third person CVs are weird, and just look like you got someone else to write them. If there is anywhere where I is appropriate, it’s on your CV for sure.

Joe

I really don’t like Apple as they’re such an evil company, and won’t get an iPhone because I can’t write proper applications for it without spending a fortune on buying a mac, but I have to admit, they’ve done a jolly good job of the whole applications thing. Features wise, it doesn’t actually do masses more than several of the Nokia phones, which also have web browser, email, blah di blah, but it just does it in a way that any idiot could use.

Like I know someone who upgraded from an n95, and is super excited about being able to use maps on their phone, having had a phone with maps built in for 2 years without realising.

Similarly, being able to easily find and download applications is a massive advance from the Nokia phones, where you have a nightmare of a zillion places with apps, application signing meaning that more experimental stuff is a real nightmare to install, pay for apps all having a different way of paying to register it, and the nokia get applications thing that you have as a link in your web browser being basically a rubbish, mobile unfriendly website, rather than actually something integrated with the phone.

The G1 from playing with it seems like they have similarly good ideas about the user interface, although not such pretty hardware (hardware keyboard is handy though).

It appears that if you let computer companies design mobile phones, they do a whole lot of a better job than mobile phone companies, by focusing on the software running on the phone, rather than the stuck in the 80s hardware focused design of the mobile phone companies, which gives you a nice handset with crappy software. As a bonus, whoever makes the iphone for Apple seems to have done quite a good hardware job too – although given the price I guess they really ought to have.

Joe

As you think it’s great, can you explain briefly what it is for?

Same as google maps but with more detail – like if you’re directing someone who is an idiot and not so good at using maps, you can give them a picture of the place they’re looking for, so at least they have some idea of what they are looking for.

It is also good fun to be able to get decent pictures of your house. We’ll never be on it as we’re on an unmaintained road which is sad. We are also at rubbish quality on google maps / google earth

Joe

Seems like something does exist, and can run off a decent hub dynamo (way less drag, and you can run really good lights off them too)

http://www.pedalpower.com.au/index_files/Page1394.htm

Joe

It’s odd here in New Zealand we have a new PM John Key, who is universally liked, well pretty much compared to Helen Clark (Labour) – there was quite a lot of optimism once he was elected, which i must say is a refreshing change to the cloud of pesimism that always seems to hang over UK politics…

That’s what a lot of people in the UK had in 1997. Then they decided to illegally invade an oil rich country just because their best friend in America happened to have a score to settle, despite the biggest ever public protests against it.

Joe

There’s a bit of unfairness here, Derby is not that bad really – Derby is a large town, Nottingham is a city. Nottingham therefore has more places to drink and a few more shops.

They are both pretty provincial – culture etc. – certainly nothing like London. Nottingham, the ‘culture’ it does have is largely about drinking, although as long as you don’t go to the wrong bits of town you can avoid the fighting. If you’re a postgrad, parts of Nottingham might be too studenty for you – it is very much a student town in places.

Nottingham is 10 minutes away from countryside, but it is dull as hell pretty flat countryside. Derby is near some hills which is nice.

Joe

Also, if you’re doing medicine, worth remembering that when you’re doing clinical stuff, you might be starting at 6am, or finishing at midnight or whatever. A 12 mile commute is super in the daytime, but not so good if you have to leave the house at 5am to do it, or in the dark after a 12 hour shift. On the roads between Derby and Nottingham, you’d need decent lights, which would be another expense.

Joe

Nottingham is a good place to get pissed. Derby is probably easier to get to good riding from though (if you don’t drive that is), it has very good trains to get to other places too.

The ride from Nottingham to Derby is okay, and you’d be against the traffic. You’d probably want to live somewhere like Beeston, out the Derby side of Nottingham, which would put you 3 miles from Nottingham, and 12 from Derby. If you lived nearer to the city centre, you’d be looking at more like 14 or 15 miles.

If it’s anything like when I was first at uni, medical students all socialise with other medical students – meaning living in Derby might make more sense from the social point of view. I’d guess that is even more true of graduate entry medicine.

The only real advantage to living in Nottingham would be if you want to get involved in student societies like the mountain bike club, pretty much all of that will be Nottingham based.

Joe

If you’re a big apple fan, there is a Schwalbe Marathon Supreme which is 2″ wide, and 200g lighter than the 2″ big apple. It makes a real difference – you still have the boingyness, but not quite so much weight.

Although they are still a bit heavy compared to a normal road tyre.

Joe

It’s only 8k, which compared to the total cost is not insane. Just don’t offer more than 8k less than you can afford.

As for whether they’d find it out – you’d risk getting done, because when you pay in such a large quantity of cash, the bank want to know where it has come from (and taking out 20k would probably ring some alarm bells in their fraud reporting systems too).

You’d also be asking the vendor to commit fraud, which they’d would be bloody stupid to agree to. Not to mention that it’s pretty stupid for either you or him to hang around with 20k in cash, there’d be a lot of trust involved in that transaction.

Also, just because you’ve been rejected for a certain amount, it doesn’t mean that you certainly won’t get an offer accepted in the end – that was the case when buying our house, just took a bit of time for them to give in.

Joe

That’s fine Joe, but my worry is that actually doing the reporting makes the legal liability for an accident at a known problem area worse.

Only if they don’t do anything about it. Presumably they’d only bring in reporting if they were going to do anything?

I’m afraid I strongly suspect that the Occupier’s Liability Act does not agree. If someone hurt themselves on something that the FC had collected data to show was a dangerous accident black-spot but had not removed/altered the FC would be in a hole legally.

Yes it is true that there may be some legal liability (although probably less than people would think), but that isn’t the only reason that they should alter things. They should alter things just because they should care about people who ride the trails that they’ve built not getting badly hurt.

Joe

If it’s asking price 270k, then offer 249,999 and wait a bit until they get desperate. It’s only 8% below, people will take that in this market (average sale price is 10% below at the moment).

Have you looked it up with property bee to see how desperate they are to sell (tells you how long it’s been on the market, whether they’ve dropped price etc.)

Joe

Also the dangerous stuff tends to be obvious on FC trails even if it’s not signed. Just think of Glentress Black for example, you’re not going to ride down stuff like the Wormhole by accident unless you’re really not paying attention.

That’s my point. That is the trail designers caring about the riders, by making it clear what you’re getting into. I bet you they also modify the trails if they think too many people are getting hurt on a section*.

Joe

* I know they do at the Welsh trail centres

It’s not about fault or legal responsibilities. It’s just caring about the people riding your trail. If you build something that in some way encourages people to ride dangerously and loads of people hurt themselves on it, that isn’t your fault (obviously it is still their fault), but that is no reason not to alter the trail to make it less likely that people hurt themselves.

Built trails are particularly an issue here because they often have that smooth, scalectrix build to them, which makes people feel able to ride really fast even when they can’t. And however much some people might say they should, people don’t walk a whole trail before they ride it.

For example if you build a fast swooping corner, round a blind bend, then steeply going down 10 foot at a 90 degree angle, with the straight on taking you off a cliff, you’d make something that encouraged people to ride really fast off a cliff. Yes they’d be stupid for doing it, and it would maybe not be your fault, but given people do ride fast on built trails, it would show some care for the people riding your trail to modify this in some way (making it more visible or whatever).

When you build a trail, it isn’t at all obvious how people will ride the trail, and which features will be dangerous, hence why recording where people fell off, and which trail sections encourage people to ride dangerously is a useful idea.

Joe

No, it’s the text that comes up on the close box when you choose to hide someone’s status updates.

Like I explained, the guy I see now and again is in/on a 3 wheeler. He rides in the middle of the lane, with an orange flag sticking out. You have to go on the opposite side of the road to overtake him, and often that’s not possible for a good long time

What, you mean you have to overtake him in the way the law says you have to overtake him, by pulling onto the opposite side of the road? That’s hardly the end of the world is it?

Joe

If you’re scared of cable cars, lifts are like that, but faster and with no walls, ceiling or floor.

Cable cars have nothing on the scaryness of some of the steeper trails out there, especially ones with an edge near them.

Facing up to your fears can be good for you anyway. Personally, I used to be dead scared of heights, but I’ve mostly got over it, by just forcing myself to do stuff like climbing & riding exposed trails. My job meant that I had to go on several of the UK’s scariest rollercoasters last week and it turns out I’m not even scared of them now.

Joe

You don’t *need* lifts, but given a lot of the longer rides involve 4 or 5 lifts, going up several hundred metres at a time, you’d have to be a climbing god to get the best out of the area we were in. In 5 days of riding unicycles in Morzine, we did over 10,000 metres of descent, I hate to think how much it’d hurt if we’d have had to ride 10,000 metres of ascent too. To put it in perspective, that’s significantly more than the height of Everest, and we were only slow unicyclists – on bikes with their fancy freewheels and suspension and all that, we could easily have done double that.

Even with lifts, you end up doing a fair bit of climbing on most of the decent xc routes.

The lifts are also jolly cheap for a weeks pass, I bet if you headed out there, you’d be too tempted not to pay up in the end.

Joe

http://www.highpath.net/cycles/cassettes/01.html will do aluminium sprockets in any size.

Joe

There is a gully that runners take down it that cuts across some of the switchbacks. It is jolly steep and full of rocks. You would probably die. But it might be fun too.

Personally I’d not bother going up Ben Nevis on foot or bike though – just isn’t an interesting path. It gets so crowded too, which would be a hassle.

Joe

wiggly wigglers

Stupid name, but the flowers are seasonal from the UK, rather than flown in ones, so you get environmental brownie points too, plus they are a bit more varied & interesting than your normal online flowers.

Joe

Slightly OT, but I remember topping out from one of the gulleys at 3pm on a dreich one december a couple of years back to be confronted with a guy on a unicycle on the summit. After a bit of chat we headed down the tourist path. Despite expecting him to pass us on the way down as he said he would, he never did. Bearing in mind it was pretty wintry, crampons, ice axe etc. and he had no lights, I sometimes wonder what happened to him…

That was Steve Colligan, scoping it out for doing all the three peaks on unicycles. Which several of them completed 6 months later. He just recently rode from Lhasa to Kathmandu via Everest Base Camp[/url]. He’s quite a serious mountaineer too.

Joe

If you want to see what high levels of immigration really look like, go to Athens (probably the south of Spain & Italy too).

Joe