The review I saw, the on screen keyboard looked terrible. It doesn’t have the ‘guess where you pointed’ predictive writing thing that the iphone has. The guy demoing it actually switched to an onscreen 3×3 keypad and did text typing on it, said it was faster.

Other than that, it looked like a nice phone, but maybe not for any kind of messaging.

Joe

I do a similar commute, and I haven’t worn waterproof trousers for ages now, not since I got mudguards. I just wear my work trousers (not smart ones). 90% of the rain on your legs / bum comes off the road, so unless it’s a really hard downpour, you don’t get wet in 15 minutes.

If you’re one of those people who loves the feeling of a wet bum though, then I’d get some cycle clips for your waterproof trousers – cheap, practical and designed to solve exactly this problem.

Joe

wouldn’t be worried if they weren’t any brighter although have seen LED at 15w

Is it labelled ’15W equivalent’ or actually taking in 15W of power?

If it is 15W equivalent, then in the real world that seems to mean about 3-5w equivalent. If it is actually 15W, then find out what it is, cos everyone will want one.

Joe

Well done for telling him off. What did he say?

Joe

Do you want to do a 100k ride, or race 100k?

If you only want to be able to do it, just up your mileage a bit and you’ll be fine. No need to worry about heart rates etc. I always work on doing roughly the distance I want to do in a day per week, so if I’m training for a 100k, I’d work up to 100km weeks and then go for it. To be honest, even if you just did 2 short rides rather than 1 per week, or do 1 long ride (50km or so) instead of your current 1 short ride, you’d be fine on a 100km.

In terms of max heart rate, I have a similar thing to you – if I just try and do a simple exercise on flat with no-one else around, I can’t always push myself so hard, and it goes up to 170 or so. However, I wore one a few times playing unicycle hockey, and I hit 200bpm. For me it’s about finding something that stops me thinking about how much it is hurting. Hills can have a similar effect I guess. As can racing other people.

Joe

Probably worth posting up a link to the bulb too – most of these are a complete waste of money for bike lights*, and they can be quite expensive.

There appear to be hundreds of MR11 sized LED lamps, and I’ve not yet seen one that’s any use. Certainly nothing that is going to be anywhere near as bright as a 20w halogen.

Joe

Is that Peavey system 100w RMS per channel? OR is it PMPO or is is 100W combined on both channels?

50w RMS per channel. I’d go for the hire route personally rather than buying something and ebaying it.

Joe

Surprisingly loud in a quiet room, but it depends a lot on what you want it for, and what the sound of the room will be like (and how loud you like your music – if it’s just background classical music, or if it’s full on headbanging party music). When you’ve got people chatting, it makes a real difference.

Personally I reckon the easiest way is to just hire a small PA – if you phone up your local dj hire shop, ask em for an amp, and a couple of speakers, stands etc, it’ll probably cost you £50-£100 for a day hire depending on where you are in the country. Make sure they know what you’re going to plug into it, and that they don’t want to hire you something with decks and all that included. They’ll probably have a preset ‘small PA’ hire or something. Make sure they bung in a lead to plug the ipod into the amp or mixer. They probably won’t hire anything less than 100w, personally I’d spend a little bit more and get something loud, it’s hard to have too loud a system, whereas a weedy one will spoil the day (although don’t get something too massive obviously as it’ll take up loads of space and be a waste of money).

Oh yeah, and my top tip is to playlist it in advance, and don’t let people plug in their own ipods, as the people who have brought ipods with them will inevitably be the people who are into My Chemical Romance or some such nonsense that really isn’t happy wedding music, or worse, they’ll have an ipod loaded full of Cliff Richard numbers. If you’re having a meal then a party, think about what kind of music you want when, there’s nothing worse than a 1000W PA blasting out happy hardcore when you’re trying to eat (okay there are probably much worse things, but you know what I mean).

Joe

Aha –

Got it. I write it out in terms of before/after changes like this:


before
y n
a
f y 3 6
t
e n 0 7
r

There are 6 positive changes, and 0 negative changes.

I can apply a simple sign test to it, giving a significance of P<0.031

We are talking stupidly silly small N here though, but I guess that is the nature of small scale pilot studies.

Ta da!

Joe

There seems to me to be no Statistical in the data.

Huh? There must be tons of trials like this – test, intervention, test. Surely they do some kind of statistical test for it?

Obviously it isn’t a properly controlled experiment – so I can’t claim that this was definitely the thing that made the difference occur, but surely there is some way to test whether something has changed?

Joe

Is it attribute data or variable data ?

It’s basically –

People are first given a problem to solve with no help.

There is a tactic that makes this class of problem easier to solve, but to a lot of people it seems like cheating.

After a first failure (all except one of them failed) We give them a hint, saying that they can do anything they like to solve the problem, then next we see if they use the easy tactic or not.

It’s about rules and expectations and stuff.

It is pretty obvious when you’re running this that it has a significant effect, but I’d really like to have some number to back it up.

Joe

chi squared?

Not for things with this small a number of samples, and not where the two tests are correlated (it’s a before-after study).

Joe

or maybe I can’t. This is doing my head in.

Aha, I think I have *just* enough data to use McNemar’s test.

Although what the hell significance means in this small an N study I don’t know.

Joe

I’ve got a BA and am working hard on getting a PhD. Before I started the PhD I used to earn £35,000 doing a programming job, and not have to work very hard. Now, I’ve worked really quite hard for 3 years, and got myself a job lined up for when I submit, paying £26,000. I have a crazy pension though, and it’s jolly fun stuff that I work on, to be honest it feels a bit cheeky that people will pay me to do it.

Joe

Depends what you want to do.

If you just want to learn to ride it, then a 20″ is probably best – it’s the smallest size that has any decent tyres available for it, and a good size to learn on.

If you have aspirations to jump off big things or do clever jumping around tricks on unicycles like this, then a trials unicycle makes sense.

If you want to ride offroad (like this guy!, then a 24″ mountain unicycle would make sense.

<http://www.unicycle.co.uk/&gt; is a good place to get them from – as they actually know about unicycles. Don’t make the mistake of buying them from a bike shop, as they will know bugger all about them, and sell you something that will fall apart in a month or two.

Joe

I’ve used the stuff from Maplin okay. Even when I didn’t have access to a heat gun, I managed to make it shrink okay over a gas cooker flame.

Joe

In case you haven’t got them, mudguards make the biggest difference to how wet your arse gets.

Joe

Charge it up, then if you’ve got a multimeter check what the voltage is. It should probably be about 15-16v.

In terms of fixing it, if it looks like it is a dead cell, you can check all the cells individually. You’d have to take it apart, and then measure the voltage across each individual cell, then put it back together with a replacement cell. It’d be a right hassle though. If there’s any chance it is a lumicycle battery, they can check batteries and fix them, although it does cost money.

Joe

Joe: nope – iPhone has a GPS receiver built-in. AFAIK it only uses transmitter-triangulation if it can’t get the GPS signal.

Needs some kind of data connection to download maps on the fly obviously, but this doesn’t have to be 3G – it could also be GPRS, Edge or WiFi.

Yeah, that’s exactly the same as the G1. It means you can’t rely on it for outdoors navigation (for example try using the bugger in Edale). Whereas nokia maps works anywhere, and you don’t have to have a data contract at all to use it. You can also go abroad and use Nokia maps as much as you like without worrying about roaming data costs. Until someone brings out a cached map solution (and something that supports OS maps for the UK), the G1 and IPhone are currently not as good as Nokia for anything other than on-road navigation in places you have signal and a cheap data contract.

Joe

There’s some bollocks above:

You can’t pay to come high up in the results, you can only pay to get an advert above the results.

Most directory sites make next to bugger all difference to results, as they suck a bit, so have poor page-rank.

If you don’t have anyone linking to you, then stick your URL into
http://www.google.com/addurl/

It is worth putting your url in things like your forum profile on here – popular sites like this have quite a high page rank.

Make sure your text is relevant, and you have keywords and page description meta tags that are honest and sensible.

If you are geographically based, then listing your address on google maps business listings can help too, as the map listings come nice and high up in a search.

https://www.google.com/local/add/login?utm_medium=et&utm_source=us-en-et-bizsol-0-finderB-all&utm_campaign=en&hl=en_US&gl=US

Joe

Did you run it while not moving, or on a ride?

If so, it will probably be the temperature cut off as the LED overheats.

Joe

****, well thats a shortening of the word Pakistan, in much the same way that Brit is for British and so on. The insult is in the intent with which its used, and quite simply it can be said in mnay ways and in many circumstances without it being negative. Equally so the other way around.

Oh for goodness sake. **** is a shortening of the word Pakistan, that has been in common use since the 70s as an insult for pretty much anyone non-white, by nasty people like the BNP, National Front, and other racists who generally agree with their ideas. Brit is a word that everyone has used for ages to describe British people, and has no negative connotations. How hard is it to understand that obvious fact?

Yes it’s just a word, but you still shouldn’t use it to refer to people, in the same way as you shouldn’t say c*nt on blue peter. It is obviously offensive, and I find it really hard to see how people can’t get that?

Joe

Anyone tried a G1 Google phone?

Yes have had a quick play on one, and it is surprisingly nice. Much less version 1 than I was expecting.

It doesn’t have off road maps, so I won’t get one yet. I’m hooked on viewranger, which is nokia only and way ahead of any map thing on the other smartphones currently – the only thing that comes close is memory map on windows mobile. I think it also requires 3g connection for street mapping, which isn’t so good either (although that’s the same on the iphone I guess?).

Joe

You can apparently flash it to make it a ‘walkman’ phone, and in the process you can unlock it.

http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/showpost.php?p=593140&postcount=1
http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/showpost.php?p=713563&postcount=602

http://www.akshayy.com/sonyericsson/patching/applying-patches-for-db2020-phone/

http://www.akshayy.com/sonyericsson/

I’ve done stuff like this to a few phones and as long as you follow instructions carefully, you can usually get away without bricking your phone. Never had to pay someone for an unlock.

Joe

I’d do it properly rather than use that cut-up sim card solution above. You need to know the model of the phone though to know if it is an easy unlock or not.

A fair number of older phones can be done just with a code calculator you calculate the unlock code based on your IMEI number (*#06# to find it).

Quite a few phones can be unlocked with a USB cable using special software.

Some newer phones can only be unlocked with special magic boxes and expensive cables that attach to internal connections on the phone circuit board. If you have one of these phones, then your only choice is to take it to a shop and pay them the £20 to unlock it.

Joe

I have noticed a recent trend towards creamizing of biscuits.

Creamy jammy dodgers have always been around, although I only ever used to see them in selection packs.

But Nice Creams? Rich Tea Creams? Malted Milk Creams? They’re all new aren’t they? Before you know it they’ll make Custard Cream Creams. What is the world coming to? It’s political correctness gone mad.

I had one where she said “get off your bike you idiot”, the horse still didn’t like it and I suggested politely that if her horse couldn’t even cope with walkers she should perhaps ride it round a few fields before taking it out into one of the most popular areas in the UK for walking / cycling. Then she said “sorry, I guess you’re right” and rode off back where she’d come from. Didn’t know what to say, I was gearing up for a good old argument there.

Joe

I think it may be possible to unlock via a USB cable with a program called bb5unlocker, which works on a lot of phones of this type, but the 6300 is probably new enough that it can only be done with a special unlock box that dodgy phone shops will have.

Joe

I think T-mobile will unlock your old phone for you. It shouldn’t cost as much as £30, probably more like a tenner or £20 at most. Probably a matter of her phoning them up and asking for the code.

A shop could do it, some of them charge ridiculous amounts though.

You can do it yourself – although be careful – there are utilities out there that claim to do codes for 6300 (and other Nokia BB5 phones), but don’t use a cable to connect to the phone. They are dodgy cons, as there’s no way to calculate the codes without access to either the phone, or Nokia’s database.

Don’t enter any codes onto it. You will brick your phone.

Joe

2 months? To fix an earpiece!

I’ve done an earpiece replacement on a nokia, took 10 minutes, most nokia service centres can fix them on the spot (although if you don’t have a receipt, they charge £45, even for a phone that is obviously in warranty due to being newer than the length of the warranty period – hence me doing the fix myself).

It’s probably the joys of the Sony repair service that you’re living with – I know when we had Sony laptops that broke with a known fault (all of them broke in the same way), it took forever for them to fix it.

Joe

Be careful if you’re using your card to do it – if it is visa debit (or some other debit cards) banks often charge extra (2.5%ish) for getting euros on it, even if you get them at the bureau de change or post office. I always get out cash from the bank, then change the cash now.

I found best thing was to walk down the high street look at the rates (using calculator on my phone to work out total rate inc commission). I saved £60 by checking out all the travel agents in our little town.

Joe

Check out the specs though – maximum of 6 amp at 250v which is 1500W. It probably depends a lot on what graphics card, how many hard disks you have in it, what you’re doing, what you have plugged in on firewire, how much memory you have etc.

Obviously that link you posted is for a quad core, not a dual quad core too – the dual quad core will use significantly more power.

It isn’t including the monitor either – if (for example) you had a 24″ cinema display, those aren’t low power – they’re rated at 212W, they should use less than that when you don’t have all the gubbins like a laptop plugged into them, but it’ll still be 150W or so.

On the plus side, those mac pros put out loads of heat, so you save a bit on the heating!

Joe

That sounds like quite a lot.

You can tell what rate you’re paying – it’s on the bill, the cost per kw/h. Check whether it is something ridiculously high (like more than 20p).

Your mac is an imac or mac mini or something? It isn’t one of the big mac pros is it (they are one of the most insanely power hungry computers you can get – up to 1.5KW)?

Joe

Also, have you submitted a sitemap to google, with at least the front page in it?

What does the google report say? are there any ‘urls not followed’ or ‘urls restricted by robots.txt’?

Joe

I’d be surprised if the form of the URL, or the place it is put is the reason. There’s probably something else wrong with the site meaning it isn’t indexed. My site uses funny urls, and is in a subdirectory, but it still comes up #1 on google for my name, and all gets indexed.

One thing I’d fix, is the front page, make it so that it is a server redirect (assuming you’re using apache, in the /.htaccess file put :
Redirect 301 /index.html http://www.ridethelakes.co.uk/cms/
) rather than a javascript redirect. Then resubmit the url to google for indexing and see if it finds the cms stuff after a bit. It may be that it isn’t finding the main page because it doesn’t follow the link from your front page.

Also, it’s probably worth putting your meta tags into joomla, rather than on the non-existent front page.

Joe

Oh yeah, should say, I did this recently, and it made a massive difference – google mail has so much better spam filtering, and just works really well compared to my old email account.

Joe

Google mail can pick up mail from other accounts, it is under ‘settings, accounts, get mail from other accounts’. It will spam filter that mail, so you don’t get all the junk.

You can set it to tag mail that comes from that account, so that you know who is still using the old account.

Do that, change your email on sites you remember (paypal, ebay etc.), and as you get emails from people you have forgotten, change the address on that site / tell them your new email.

Joe

Time to consider emigration I think.

Just don’t go to the South Island of New Zealand – they haven’t invented central heating yet, and mostly live in un-insulated* wooden houses. And that’s in somewhere that gets snow in winter. Jumper-tastic.

Joe

* Actually one house I lived in did have ‘insulation’, there was a sheet of silver cooking foil between the wallpaper and the wood of the outside wall.

On most of the cheap unlimited mobile internet tariffs this is forbidden, you have to pay more for a contract that allows tethering. The official take on it is that if they detect you using it with a computer, they charge you per KB for that usage (usually something ridiculous like £1 a megabyte).

But they quite likely won’t notice unless you download loads of stuff. It’s up to you if you want to take the risk of a big bill though.

Joe