I’ve put some of them on recently, seem okay so far (pipedream sirius, so meant to be 100-130mm fork). Swapped from a reba because I wanted something a bit longer and was concerned the reba was on the way out without very expensive servicing. Can’t say I’ve noticed a massive difference, apart from them being a bit longer, which is probably a good sign. Not quite as adjustable as some, only got the one air chamber and rebound adjust, but I think I tended to have everything set to average on the trends anyway.

Bit early to comment on durability, but it seems well enough made. I think it’s grease lubed, so the stanchions seem more ‘sticky’ after riding than they were on the reba which maybe isn’t ideal in terms of mud sticking to them, but probably not really an issue.

I have tended to use the travel adjust to switch between the longest and shortest setting, I think using middle settings might be a but odd – there’s no dial like on u-turn forks, you just press the lever while compressing or releasing the fork to the required height, and there are no travel markings on the stanchions to guide you (I have considered adding my own, but I’m not quite that bothered.) Also, it needs to be unloaded to adjust, so it can be done on the fly, but only if you can manual while you do it.

Also bear in mind that the through axle they use requires a hub with a continuous 15mm sleeve, hubs with adapters might be no good – there’s a sort of sprung mushroomy thing that expand as soon as it clears the axle, which with adapters happens in the middle if the hub. It can still work worth a 15mm diameter poking tube, but that sounds like a faff. SLX is fine, and cheap.

Bit late, but you probably would’t have got that one. Whenever I’ve hired a car (albeit only a handful of times) I’ve booked the smallest cheapest one on their website and they’ve never actually had one when I’ve collected it. Book a 1.0 matiz/get a 1.4 corsa type thing. Happened even after they did a hard sell for the upgrade. I do wonder how many of the small cars they actually have compared to the bigger types. Still, £20 for not having to hope isn’t so bad.

Next thing for them to sell you is the extra insurance, they’ll point out that otherwise there’s a twelvety billion pound excess if it gets rained on. Enterprise charge something like £20/day for that, although they can be haggled with, and your can get it from other companies. ‘course, hertz might be different.

I keep looking at these:
That can’t be right.

Have to agree with the OP, pretty impressed right now. Just phoned about a QR15 hub that might have been missing a lock ring (bigger axle so standard centrelock lockring won’t work) – being shimano, I expected to be told I’d need a new disk to get the new lockring (which I said, and would have been happy with), but they’ve just posted a DT swiss adapter that comes with the bigger lockring. Probably wiped out any profit they’d made, so I’m quite impressed with that – clearly trying to guilt me into getting a carbon 456.

Gravity varies as the inverse square of the distance between the two objects

This is true, and actually causes crashes – on uneven ground, the presence of small but very close lumps of rock causes overall gravity to exert a force slightly off-vertical. These ‘gusts’ of gravity cause many crashes. That’s why long travel suspension helps – you start off higher up, so the gravity fluctuations are reduced.

Funny enough, my cat likes playing fetch, with lumps of foil in particular. It’d be fine, but he then drops it on your feet, sees a small moving thing, briefly remembers his species and pounces, turning your feet into collateral damage.

I don’t think the parts are inter-changeable though, sorry.

It’s also worth checking if the university actually have a 100% share of the IP – at mine any IP produced by students is shared between all parties (uni, student, supervisors).

Probably unlikely to come to anything – if it’s published they can just do it anyway, but worth a thought. The uni might even have an IP/commercialization office or similar, because lots of universities are rather keen on that sort of thing.

I was overtaken by a van while biking in this morning (Nottingham, snowy but not that bad, wasn’t snowing at the time), and the snow was blowing off the roof giving me a personalized quite severe blizzard for 10 seconds, while going through a set of traffic lights. That was fun.

Quite tall van though, not really sure how you’d clear the top of it.

can we keep this thread going to January 19th? I want to add my name without jinxing my viva.

(medical devices, mainly chips to point lasers at, after bouncing them off people)

I’ve got the earlier version of the acer aspire one. I wrote most of a PhD thesis on it, including editing diagrams and the like. It’s good enough, just might take a bit of adjustment if you’re used to working with lots of windows open at once (runs out of screen size rather than power).

It’s worth getting one with good battery life, or a bigger aftermarket battery, to get the most out of the portability.

Mine seems to just about cope with films, but not HD, although I think newer netbooks have better processors and video chips anyway.

Does anyone ever get the Christmas card list, ‘contact next’ list and ‘first against the wall when the revolution comes’ lists mixed up? Could be awkward.

This seems worth pointing out here:

darryl-cunningham.blogspot.com/2010/06/homeopathy.html

(It’s a comic, but significantly better than most ‘proper’ science journalism. There’s also a linked comic about MMR which is quite good.)

kona type H, if I remember correctly from when I had a fury (good bike, btw).

I’m on a phone otherwise I’d Google and check that. Think I got it from wiggle, but it was a while ago.

this happened to me a while ago, fixed it with testdisk: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

it's text based, but follow the step by step guide linked from that page and it's okay. It makes it fairly clear when it's about to do things so you can always use it to analyse the disk and see what it can do, but run away if uncertain without breaking things.

I just use washing up liquid and water with mine, seems to work (got it for the commuter, which had strata of crap built up on the chain). Leaves the chain covered in bubbles, but a quick spray with WD-40 shifts those, then proper lube goes back on. Seems to work, and somehow I prefer that to using proper degreasers. For all I know washing up liquid is much worse but the chain hasn't melted yet.

I've used the chain-in-a-jar-of-degreaser option before, that probably works a little better and is still pretty easy, but I reckon this way is slightly simpler (30 seconds to prepare it, 30 seconds cleaning and then pour the remaining contents down the sink.)

I've got some, seem okay if not stunning quality (seem a bit plasticy, but then they are plastic…)

The light reactive bit is only a change in light transmission from 22-33%, which I don't really notice. That might be how these things are normally, but I don't know how that compares to the specialized equivalent.

you aren't at notts uni are you by any chance? If so, we've met, and if you want a hand changing the travel i've done the same thing to my rebas – fairly easy job with the right tools, and I think they're similar to take apart. Not much help until September though.

Rebas are pretty good mind, and still only ~1.6kg

Is there not a slight issue here that awesome DACs etc. aren't actually used in reading digital content off a disk then transmitting it all to a TV (or AV decoder) on a digital HDMI cable? They don't really convert it to analogue just to re-digitise it do they?

2 thoughts:

'But isn't the chain from Wright brothers to space probes largely due to developments in technology and manufacturing processes than 'science''
-Yes, but where do you think the developments in technology came from? Engineering is basically applying science to real problems. The skills involved are similar but sufficiently different that both are needed.

'Or maybe I don't get it' (not wanting to single anyone out, this one's quite common)
-To a large extent, you don't get it. Neither do I. Or a lot of people. The current theories on the origins of the universe, particle/quantum physics etc are horrendously complicated and really quite difficult to follow. But quite a lot of people have spent a long time working on them, it's not just one persons best guess. Dark matter etc is a good example – sounds really, really far fetched, but there's quite a lot of work showing that it's a fairly plausible theory. Not 'getting it' is fine*, assuming that it must be wrong because of that is maybe a bit hasty.

*That's not what she said.

I thought the reason that these adverts aren't that common was that they're not necessarily that effective – they're shocking, but almost too shocking – no one ever sees themselves as the guilty party, because they don't think they're that bad (as in 'but I only have a couple, I'm not like those idiots'.

The alternative to the shock tactics is to slightly nudge behaviour in the right direction – like the australian example above, which is a tactic that could work for many issues.

They don't all do that. When ours is outside he comes back and crys to be let back inside to use the litter tray. But then he is a stupid cat, and about as far from the traditional feral hunter cat as possible.

Big pack of cling film. Doesn't take up too much space, can wrap the bike as efficiently as you want, will hopefully take the mud off your bike with it when you remove it, and could also wrap an extra slice of cake to eat when you get home.

(Actually – I thought I was joking, but that could work…)

WiFi is what wireless computer networks use, so if you have a wireless router at home (or wireless at work, free wifi in various public places etc) then the phone can use that for internet stuff. It's much faster, although battery life might suffer a bit.

GPRS is what standard mobiles use for data (general packet radio service), so works (almost) everywhere, but is much slower. It's been around for ages. Confusingly enough, GPRS works over a standard GSM connection, GSM being what a normal mobile uses. It's sometimes referred to as 2G, or maybe 2.5G. There are things like EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution) which is a slightly faster form of GPRS, which is what the original iphone used.

There is also 3G, which gives nearly as good coverage as normal phone stuff (ie everywhere in civilization, some places outside it, and expanding, and all 3G phones can use normal connections too) but isn't as fast as WiFi. It'll be enough for most things though – all the 'mobile broadband' type deals use a 3G dongle for a PC.

Basically go for wifi if you want a really fast connection on a home network, 3G if you want vaguely fast internet access anywhere, 2G if you can't get either, but if you want data you really want 3G as a minimum.

(I suspect you know most of that but are just confusing GPRS and 3G, but I'm sat here waiting for a simulation to run. It appears that I am an uber internet geek. So now I'm going home to my cat.)

Can you get OS mapping on an iphone or android phone? The only OS mapping things I've seen have been for windows mobile. No point having a fantastic easy to use phone with GPS if you can't use a proper map with it. (for mountain bike use, at least)

Wasn't the idea of the summer season to be a bit like the normal 456, but getting the slacker angles with shorter travel forks? Doesn't that make a 140mm fork maybe a bit long?

Right. Link to sram mtb chains manual

It refers to 'both halves of the power link' (eg 2.3) and 'power link' is used as a singular repeatedly. 'Power links' is never mentioned.

Only problem is now I feel I have conclusively proved the case for 'it's a pair of link plates making up one power link' over 'it's a pair of power links to join 1 chain', and yet I don't feel like a winner…

Just to complicate things – if you use a chaintool to remove one bit of a chain, you would probably refer to that as removing a link. You could then replace that link with a pair of powerlinks to get the same length of chain. Does that make sense? Wouldn't it make more sense to think of a power link as being composed of two halves, which together make one link? Alternatively, if you're out riding at some point with a friend who breaks a chain, offer them a powerlink to help out and see how they react when you hand over a single plate of that link.

Bloomin silly that you can actually buy just the one link (or half link?) anyway. Has anyone ever needed one link?

Or you can get KMC missing links from another online retailer that are sold as 'pack of 2', which is enough to join two chains.

One problem if you go off on an (understandably) angry rant is that the recipient may cower and look all sheepish then, but they get time to think about it afterwards too. In the same 5 minutes that you spend thinking of that effective, witty comment, they’re having time to think about it and then possibly just dismiss the whole incident as some nutter militant cyclist who obviously completely over-reacted. The more calm approach might not seem as effective at the time, but it might make them think a bit more after the event.

‘course, some people are probably the other way around, and some are just too stupid for either approach to make any difference. Ah well.

You can get ipod docks intended for connecting to a stereo, just a cradle with a power connection to charge it and a phono lead ouput. Same thing as getting a phono lead and a charger really, but it’s a bit neater, and you can probably get one with a remote, which might be handy.