We’re only 9th or 10th in Europe in terms of asylum seekers (per head of population).

In terms of what makes us attractive to them, I’d guess that communities of people from their original countries might be attractive, and also they are far more likely to be able to speak some English than most other European languages.

Joe

Looking at the website about it – it really does seem that the big thing those people are actually against, is the lane being closed so they can’t drive their four by fours down it for a week or so.

Joe

This sounds exactly like my experience of outsourcing coding work abroad. You pay less, but you end up spending more in the end fixing up the problems caused by poor communication and an unknown level of skill at their end.

If you have the design and content already, and you really just want the back end coding, then I’d find someone who offers hosting with a CMS and a checkout solution – something like joomla/virtuemart.

Or even if you just find someone who does php/mysql hosting, setting up joomla is not that hard.

Key thing is to avoid anyone who doesn’t want to use some off the shelf solution for the shopping cart etc., they’ll only hack you up some custom thing that will be a nightmare to maintain.

Joe

If you want free, Gimp is very full featured (not quite as good as photoshop, but not stuff most digital photography types will miss). Paint.net is quite easy to use.

Paintshop Pro used to be quite good and easy to use, you have to pay for it, but it is cheap. I dunno what the current version is like.

Photoshop Elements is a cut down Photoshop, which is useful if you think you’re likely to end up working in a professional environment where they have Photoshop at a later date.

Joe

What’s the pressure at? Presuming you’ve checked this, but if it’s high it could just be the filling loop left turned on a little bit. Makes it drip from the overflow.

Joe

Swafega was invented in Belper, and is still made there.

If people have obscure names, facebook can be a pretty good way for getting in touch with them. Or google for “@company.com” until you find someone’s email address, to get the format.

Joe

Lots of kids only have one set of grandparents anyway. Your kids probably won’t even notice they’re missing a grandma until they’re a bit older.

When they get old enough to ask about it, be honest about it. If they really want to meet these grandparents, maybe you could consider it then.

Or, alternatively, tell them that their grandparents are evil witches and that you only just escaped with your lives after they tried to cook you!

Joe

Mrnutt is right with some points we will be on the banned list next if we do not have a voice against “the ramblers”. We are no different to the 4×4 people, we ride illegal routes and do loads of damage that is difficult to justify to a red socky person….

People always come out with this one, that mountain bikes will be next.

The difference between 4×4/motorbikes and ramblers / mountain bikers, is that a single 4×4 can do a massive amount of damage to a track just by hanging around and spinning the wheels with their powerful engines in the way they tend to. Bikes or ramblers it takes hundreds or thousands of them to do the same kind of damage.

Also, in the Peak, several times I’ve had those bloody motorbikers / quad bikers hammer past spraying mud up, not even bothering to slow down. Even inconsiderately ridden mountain bikes don’t send up anywhere the same amount of muck, or scare people anywhere near as much.

I have seen a small number of considerately ridden motorbikes in the Peak District, but the vast majority that you see won’t slow down for anything, whereas I’d say 90% of mountain bikers you see there don’t do anything stupid, and pass people sensibly. It may not be that the passtime is inherently anti-social, but it is really obvious that the majority of people who do it, ride in an anti-social manner and should have their bikes impounded or whatever.

Joe

There is a francois.egger@omega.ch, so nicolas.hayek@omega.ch might be worth a try, or nayla.hayek

Or phone em (use skype or some other cheap phone service) +41 32 343 68 11

Joe

5yr old G4 ibook. Its died 3times, resurrected and been dropped/knocked off tables onto the floor. I dont know if mine is ‘special’ but its tough as old boots

‘died 3 times’ in 5 years? That’s not so good is it? We’ve got Dell, Toshiba and other PC laptops that are still happily chugging along after that kind of time, without being dead.

Personally, I develop software, and have had some bad experiences with Apple as a company (evil monopolising, closed system buggers that they are*), so I only develop for Windows, so I need a Windows PC, but to be honest the user experience is much of a muchness nowadays.

Joe

* much more so than Microsoft

Insurance brokers all wanted to know if we were ‘within 400m of water’, which we are (390m), but half way up a bloody great hill (so not in a flood risk area).

ING appear to do a quote for £150 less than the closest one, from talking to them, they appear to work on age / surveyors rebuild cost (which they take and then assume actual rebuild cost will be roughly double), rather than looking at the listing level.

Joe

I’ve been riding rollercoasters for work this week, which was interesting, as i’d never ridden a big coaster before and was a bit scared of them, but it turns out they aren’t scary at all, or at least the actual ride bit isn’t. The lifts are sometimes a little scary – particularly the one on saw at thorpe park which is vertical, and at the top the track goes 110 degrees over to point downwards, meaning that when you go over the top, you can’t see the track at all.

The actual whooshing around bit doesn’t really seem scary at all – i don’t seem to get that stomach going up feeling that i remember from being a kid on fairground rides. You get some great views from them too, which is an aspect i’d not considered before.

Personally, i’ve done way more scary things on bikes & unicycles off road, i was pretty suprised at just how unscary rollercoasters are.

Joe

Is it forestry land? Just because in some places forestry sell permits for horse riders to ride, which means they are allowed anywhere on that land.

Joe

shimano hub dynamo + B+M Lumotec IQ Cyo* light is the ultimate commuter light (ignoring the only from Germany £400 dynamo lights).

It does mean rebuilding your front wheel, and did cost something like £140 for the parts but totally worth it – bright enough for unlit roads, no charging hassles, you can run a back light off it too. It doesn’t flash, but it is really quite bright, if you really want a flashy light stick on a 10 quid cateye too.

Dynamo is much more convenient than battery, it just stays on the bike, and whenever you need light it is there, the B+M senso ones even turn themselves on automatically when they are needed. It means you don’t need to think about lights, like if you decide to go on a long ride after work in summer and get caught out by dusk, or you go out to the pub unexpectedly.

Joe

*I’ve got the iq fly, which is the older, 2/3 brightness version and it is jolly good – the new cyo must be really quite good

Is May getting into midge season? If it is midge season, then I’d not bother taking the bivvy bag etc. unless you really need them for an emergency.

The most important thing to keep riding being fun is to take a minimal amount of gear*. Trailers might be great if you really need to take the kitchen sink (camping, climbing gear or whatever), but if you’re only carrying a bit of bivvy gear and a change of clothes, it’d be overkill, any small rucksack will do the job. I’ve got a 25 litre camelbak that is good for this – although my sleeping/bivvy bag is a very small (very expensive) one. If you don’t have small gear, you might need something more like a 35l bag.

Joe

* don’t forget you can usually wash clothes in sinks where you are staying rather than taking multiple changes of clothes (especially at youth hostels with drying rooms and the like)

It is only an offence to take a picture IF you are going to use it for terrorist purposes. So paparazzi taking pics, tourists taking pics of coppers these aren’t offences, unless they are going to pass them onto terrorist organisations to use.

But ‘terrorist purposes’ will no doubt be interpreted as including journalists’ pictures of any group involved in any kind of political demonstration. ie. one of the few times when the police might want to be able to get away with bad stuff without it being splashed on the front page of the papers / on the BBC news. They don’t give a damn if anyone takes pictures of a policeman on the beat or whatever, it is policing of political demonstrations that all this is about.

It’s doubly stupid as the events they are using these powers at, typically there are also tons of police taking pictures of journalists to intimidate them. Photographers at protests and use of mobiles, the internet and news organisations to distribute the pictures quickly are one of the few things stopping police just ploughing in there and beating up random people like they are alleged to have done all the time in the good old days.

Joe

£800? Was that a full packing and unpacking service?

That’s over twice what the quotes we’re getting for a similar move (although in Nottinghamshire).

There is some website that you can put in the move details and you get a bunch of quotes from people by email – can’t remember the name. Only trouble with it is that you do get a load of spam from removals people – they’re desperate for work at the moment (so probably worth haggling too).

Joe

You can map routes on google maps, using mapmyride.com or similar, and it will make you gpx files that follow the roads, so you can get a display showing you which direction to go at any particular junction.

It isn’t as good as a proper sat nav, you’ll be more looking at a wiggly line and working out the corners from that.

Having a gps with a decent road map is great for road riding, although I’ve not seen anything that combines a good road atlas (like nokia phones / g-phone / iphones have) with a good ability to follow pre-planned routes (like pretty much any off road gps has)

Joe

The hours appear pretty good to me. I live within a 200yds of a school and when I work from home, like today they start a considerably later than me and other than the head teacher who I suspect is quite well paid? the others left before some of the parents had driven away with their offsprings.

Except for the other half of the work that is done at home. Teachers get homework as well as kids you know.

Joe

Druidh is 100% correct. Its a tradition alright – one dating from when women were chattels and remained the property of a man – her father before she was married and her husband afterwards. totally disrespectful to your wife to be to ask her father

Yup, if he says no, would you then give up on her?

If you would still ask her to marry you anyway, then asking him is just an empty gesture that you don’t really mean.

If you wouldn’t marry her, then you are treating her as property of her dad.

Joe

There’s a your speed/slow down sign coming out of Nottingham (Derby Road for anyone who knows it) that is set at 30 on a nice downhill. You’d have to be a bit slow not to set that one off.

Never set off a proper speed camera though.

Joe

its his field, how about holding a ploughing match in your office, after all its not liek your wanting to inconvenience his work for the benifit of your hobby?

Right so it’s okay for him to do whatever he wants, bang in the middle of a public road? Or is it different to you in some way just because it’s a right of way that only bikes and horses can go down? Would it be okay for a farmer to decide to leave a tractor blocking a road for a few weeks?

Joe

Reading the web page it does seem like those people aren’t so fussed about a tower being built and spoiling the landscape, but more that they’re not going to be able to drive their 4x4s down Coldharbour lane for a couple of weeks.

Joe

Does it have a dynamo? My current project on the cargo bike is to get it dymano’ed up.

I got one on my lovely commuter, dynamos are unbelievably useful on a useful bike like this, and modern ones are properly bright. No more having to charge lights or remember to bring lights with me if I’m going out at night, and I can have unexpectedly late nights without worrying about getting home. That and the almost permanently fixed big saddlebag make it so much more practical.

Still not found a way to get a chain guard that works with a big triple chainset though.

I commuted for a bit on the raleigh version of this kind of bike – it was quite convenient, went okay on the flat, but darned hard to get up any kind of hill.

Joe

I spose of you actually are a diver, they might be worth getting. I dunno.

Surely divers will use a dive computer nowadays rather than rely on some device and doing calculations & guesswork?

Joe

I’m a serial loser and breaker of watches. Or at least was, until I got the current one. I think I must have gone through a watch a year easily, lost em, showered with non-waterproof ones, stood on em, dropped them from heights, crashed and broke the rubber straps etc.

Now I have an ‘aviatime’ digital watch than cost £3.99, which appears to be surviving just fine, and isn’t even badly scratched, despite me wearing it everywhere for at least a couple of years, swimming with it on, riding with it on, showering with it on etc.

It’s more accurate, lighter weight and probably more reliable than a mechanical watch too. I couldn’t cope with a big lump of metal on my wrist all the time (and experience shows that I will forget to take it off when I go riding or whatever, so I would never have a ‘best’ watch).

Joe

I’ve got an altura cropton – it’s not properly waterproof, but good enough for showers – keeps the wind off, actually breathable*, packs down tiny and dead cheap. Don’t really bother with a waterproof since I fitted mudguards.

Joe

*anything waterproof (including expensive ones) always seems to be breathable only when you’re not putting any effort in / sweating.

The budget airlines probably run too close to capacity for this to work – they always seem to be very full when I’ve got them.

Worth trying your local travel agents though – ones in our town often seem to have quite cheap ‘leaving tomorrow’ type deals advertised.

Joe

Bag of crisps.

Less clothing if you’re sweating too much. You can’t do this one in summer, but if you’re sweating excessively in winter / spring, that’s a sign of too much clothing surely?

Architects are weird – they charge a fortune, yet they fail to understand really basic things.

My favourite bugbear, is toilets. Architects routinely specify the same size for ladies and mens toilets, when absolutely everyone knows that men spend way less time on the loo than women. Like if you go to St Pancras station, there is always a queue of about 100 people running out of the ladies loos, and no queue for the mens. Surely at some point, some architecture academic could have gone to a train station (or a pub, a club, a theatre, a sports stadium, or pretty much anywhere open to the public), worked out that they were all doing this wrong and that maybe it’d make sense to make more cubicles in the ladies than in the gents, and passed this on to their students at some point during the ridiculously long qualification process?

Joe

It’s the extra detail within the audio recording that a higher sampling rate affords.

What do you mean ‘extra detail’? Isn’t the whole point of Nyquist’s theorem that there is no detail left out of the sound, as long as the frequencies being reproduced are below 22050khz (assuming a 44100 signal)?

Personally I still think it makes a difference in production as you’re applying algorithms to it that add noise, but I don’t believe people can hear the difference between the same track put down to 44100, if nothing else has been done to it.

Joe

Yeah hassle the landlord and see if you can sort it – although from the other tenant’s point of view, if you’re moving yourself in cars or hired van or whatever, 5pm isn’t an absurdly late time to finish doing it. It isn’t like having a removal company to do it.

Joe

Now, as the true Hifi buffs will know, and sorry to shatter the illusion for the rest of you, CD’s are NOT true “High Fidelity” audio sources. They are VERY heavily compressed still. They are recorded at 44.1KHz sampling rate, at in 16 bit stereo. What does this mean? Well when compared to the likes of DVD Audio, or SACD’s, or any audio source recorded on a computer at the highest quality possible (any advances on 192KHz and 24 bit?), or even good old vinyl, the CD does not provide a fully “High Fidelity” experience.

Come on – can any bugger really hear the difference? Obviously the higher frequency doesn’t make a difference (because it only affects sounds outside the human hearing range).

Possibly the bit depth might do – although how many people there are who can really tell more than 65536 different levels of sound, I don’t know?

24 bit is good for production / mixing, where you’re going to be applying transformations to it, which cause inevitable losses in quality, which are made much smaller when you’re using a 24 bit signal. But if you mix down at the end to a CD, I dunno who could tell the difference?

You can hear the difference between SACDs and CDs, because they are mastered differently, thanks to the typical market for each product. I wonder if you took an SACD signal, stuck it into logic or whatever, put it down to 44khz 16 bit, and played the two back to back, both through the same hardware as a blind test, whether anyone could tell the difference?

Joe

Unless you’re fat and lazy, it’s primarily a driving challenge rather than a walking challenge.

It’s also a bit environmentally unfriendly both in terms of spending so long driving, plus also the routes most people take are a bit antisocial / environmentally damaging, as described by the link above.

Joe

Do you mean multiple different digital pictures that you want to lay out, or do you want to stitch a big panorama together out of multiple images from the same place, and do it seamlessly?

If the first, then PSP should be fine.

If the second, then Hugin is very good, and is free.

Joe

Yes, it’s great that he’s mobile etc etc but he can bloody well skate somewhere else. I like to skate but I’ve never done it in a crowded town centre. There are no sensible brakes (that rubber block certainly doesn’t count) and people and especially kids jumping about all over the place.

I’d expect if he’s that good at skating (he appears pretty good), he’d be able to stop quickly. Skating in London, pretty much everywhere you skate is this crowded, and it’s easy enough to stop, for a lot of people, pretty much the first thing they learn is how to do the various stops.

Joe

it costs us about £200 a month to keep up with it – our bit of the investment. It was empty for 10 months last year so I’ve struggled my way through.
…
I’m hoping we’re through the worst of it and it will be worth it in 20 years time when I cash it in…

Blimey – you’ve gotta make £50,000 on selling the house before you even break even on your 20 year investment? Starting from the top of a market? That sounds like a bit of a risk no? And you’ve already sunk 20% of the original price into it.

Joe

That’s the ideal situaion to be honest – proper road bike levers without hoods, that don’t spit the cables out all over the place.

I think the cable will still come out the wrong end of those won’t it?

Alternatively, you could stick flat bar levers on the right way round and see how that feels, you’d be pulling them in a slightly different direction, but it might just work.

Joe

Bear in mind:

1) At the moment, there is a massive oversupply of rental places in a lot of areas, and rent doesn’t cover the mortgage
2) If 95% mortgages become available, they’ll be at silly high interest rates (last few 90% mortgages are at something like >6%)
3) Pretty much no-one will do 95% on a buy to let – typically more like 60%.
4) Isn’t it absolutely crazy to do a buy to let in the middle of a property crash at the start of a recession, when even the most optimistic of people are predicting a further 10% drop in house prices? Bearing in mind that if you bought a house at a similar time in the early 90s, you’d have had 12 years before you got *any* growth in real value.

Do you own your own house outright yet?

Joe