Fox Float R here. Don’t need anything else, less to go wrong.

Use flash or incandescent light, rather than flourescent, LED or CFL, because they have a continuous output spectrum and will allow you to adjust and reproduce your colours accurately. Sunlight works too but it’s inconsistent.

And just to stress, set your white balance accordingly – your camera will have several white balance presets, but you can’t beat taking a custom reading before you start!

Order a round of drinks at the bar, then conveniently disappear to the toilet (for a dump, natch). With a bit of luck your mate will have to pick up the tab.

Also, never go out drinking with more mates than pints you can manage – that way, if you’re in “rounds” you’ll only have to buy one round all night!

Shop at Aldi no matter what anybody else says.

Sponge lifts wherever you can.

Go to your mum’s for tea. All the time.

Fine Art America? Loads of options on there.

Or Fotomoto.

No soul or you just don’t notice it?

My take is that if you don’t notice something, it’s doing it’s job perfectly well.

My Orange Alpine is probably the best MTB I’ve ever owned (and I’ve had a few in my time. And bikes. Matron.) – but when I’m out on it I just don’t notice that it’s there (except when I’m having to grind up stupidly steep hills…).

To me that’s the sign of a great bike. Yes, it doesn’t “engage” perhaps as a nice hand-crafted steel hardtail with your pick of components, but hey – it’s a bike!

Oh. My. Lord. 8O

(retires to gentlemen’s rest room with iPad…)

I’ve long been of the opinion that driving should require regular testing. Had to do my theory test for motorbike last week and it does at least mean I had to revise a few things first.

This – and the initial test should also include a test of intelligence.

My parents are both in their 70s and both still drive. They both passed their tests in the late 1950’s. Their standard of driving is not up to scratch. I positively avoid letting them drive me anywhere because I just don’t feel safe with either one of them at the wheel.

I would happily take my driving test every five years, if only to prove a point to everyone else.

eBay knob-head of the highest order. Do not use.

Singletrack but rarely read more than half the articles these days. I an not sure what it is but it’s not grabbing me so much lately.

This. I’ve actually cancelled my subscription though. It’s gone way too beardy-weirdy lentil-munching tree-hugging sandal-wearing bleeding-heart lefty-liberal alternative technology for me lately.

Back in the day I used to have a Bontrager Race Lite RS (an original one, built by the man himslef, not a post-Trek sell-out model).

It was built from True Temper road tubing, with no frills or bells and whistles (Bontragers were one of the first MTB frames to do away with a chainstay bridge).

The frame weighed a midges’ cock over 4lbs, and all up weight for the complete bike, even with RockShox Quadras (remember them?) was about 21.5lbs.

I’d echo the middle-of-the-road focal length. Aperture wise, most zoom lenses are at their best in the f5,6 – f8 range.

Use the lowest ISO rating that you can, and set your white balance properly for the available light (get an 18% grey card off FleaBay and learn how to take a custom setting).

If you are using a tripod and release, also consider using the eyepiece cover to prevent light leakage through the prism and use the LCD for composing/framing the shot.

I’m not new, but I’ve never had an issue. Saying that I always drop in and collect

I bought quite bit off stuff off them via eBay a few years ago and never had an issue. Delivery was sometimes a bit slow but nothing I couldn’t live with.

That said, given the bad press that they’ve had I’d never order off them again.

I wonder how much of their s**t-house attitude is down to their customer’s s**t-house attitudes though? I do think that a lot of complainers (especially the serial type (and I’m not saying that that includes anyone here)) do tend to go into these situations all guns blazing and then get upset when they get it back.

I reckon that hill in the background looks down on Burnley Rd, somewhere round Holme Chapel, so the rider is possibly heading up towards the Long Causeway?

No, absolutely not – like I said, I know this area inside and out and it’s definitely not in the CLiviger Gorge. I’ll put money it.

You boys do have funny laws down there

It’s not THAT difficult!

Get the OS map for the area. Use the key to identify public footpaths (on OS Landranger (1:50000) they’re red dotted lines; on Explorer maps (1:25000 they’re green).

Stay off public footpaths. Everything else is fair game, except where no public right of way exists. Easy!

If you’re going to try Loughrigg, best to get there early – it’s Red Sock central even on bad days.

I’m actually beginning to wonder if the pic is a composite – the background looks very familiar, like either the area below Stoodley Pike/above Mankinholes and Lumbutts, or round Todmorden Edge. It’s the foreground that I’m stumped by…

Those hills in the background look way too Calderdale’y to me. Don’t recognise it though – its not my end of the valley so I’m going to have a guess that its somewhere outside Tod on the way to Burnley near Cock Hill looking north.

Hmm. That would put it in the Cliviger Gorge, which I know like the back of my hand…don’t think it’s round there but…

And this week’s award for The Most Unsubstantiated Cobblers in a Single Thread goes to…

woooooooooooooossssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Obviously that was the sound of it either going right over my head, or me missing the point by a country mile…

IGMC…

The EDL promotes the understanding of Islam and the implications for non-Muslims forced to live alongside it. Islam is not just a religious system, but a political and social ideology that seeks to dominate all non-believers and impose a harsh legal system that rejects democratic accountability and human rights.

So which bit of that isn’t racist?

The above statement may not be factually correct, but Islam is a faith system, not a race.

To to answer your question literally, none of the above is racist. “Religionist” yes, racist, no.

Or the flipside a manager who is incapable of managing a team. Just dithers, let’s meetings go of course and just forwards upper managment ideas without reading/ understanding then.

This is my MD all over. Incapable of making a decision, too lightweight for his own good. Plus he’s a s**t driver.

It makes me wonder how he ever got into business in the first place. Oh that’s right, it’s his company…

Looks like Calderdale to me too but I dunno where.

It does to me too, hence the ask. I thought it might be down Walsden/Summit somewhere towards Littleborough.

Mods/Chipps? Any comments?

I am afraid you are going to have to buy a whole new bike as your 3×10 bike will not be designed to withstand the extra strains of 1×10. 1×10 is such a game changer though this is not much for the return on the investment.

And this week’s award for The Most Unsubstantiated Cobblers in a Single Thread goes to…

I had 2 x 9 on my Orange Alpine (22/32 x 11-34). I went 1 x 10 for simplicity’s sake more than anything.

I removed the inner ring from my chainset (a Race Face Respond, so I can remove the inner spider, too) and fitted a Hope 32T singlespeed/DH ring. The cassette I replaced with a Shimano SLX 11 – 36 10 speed affair, a Sram X7 10-speed rear mech and X0 shifter, together with a Sram 10-speed chain.

I already had a Superstar roller so I added an upper chain guide too.

The gears are a bit higher than previously, but only by about 5 inches on the lowest gear so I haven’t lost a lot. Given that I also ride a road bike a lot more these days, it hasn’t really proved a problem, except perhaps on the very steepest of climbs, but I’m working on those!

In all, best mod I’ve made in a long time.

Decent overshoes are great. I find the neoprene ones work best

+1

Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner).

Bear with me on this one…

It was the first feature length film ever made by an entirely Inuit crew and featuring an all Inuit cast (you’re reading that right, Inuit – Eskimo in the vernacular).

The dialogue is all in Inuktitut and it’s probably one of the most atmospheric films you’ll ever see. There’s very little music so all the sounds are what you would expect to hear – which is mainly the creaking and shifting sea ice.

Atanarjuat is a traditional Inuit tale of two brothers, set at odds when a mysterious shaman appears in the midst of their community preaching ill omens.

It needs a couple of watches to get the hang of it but it’s incredibly rewarding if you persevere with it.

Linky HERE

Does Red Leicester count?

It’s not the low path on Blencathra between Hallsfell and the ridge next to it, is it? The background doesn’t look quite right but the foreground looks familiar.

Is this a quiz?

Good call, but I’m favouring the Calderdale/South Pennines area, given the location of the magazine’s offices.

^ Ta!

Like this (link)…

Yellow filter over the light lenses? See if you can get hold of some theatrical/photographic lighting gels (ebay?) and fashion something out of those. Don’t go too yellow though, even a slight tint will reduce the colour temperature significantly.

Are you ready for the smell of dog fart constantly lingering?? All greyhounds fart for England. Lovely looking beast!

More directly linked, could events in Palestine be a direct result of the atrocities conducted throughout the holocaust, spread out over a far longer timescale?

Of course they are, how could they not be? Until 1948, the Jews were a stateless people. They had always claimed that God had given them Israel as their “promised land” so who better to wrest it from the Arabs and return it to them than the victors of WW2?

And that’s when the sh!t REALLY hit the fan…

How many 40 somethings know anything about the English Civil War, the foundation of our modern state?

Not many, I’ll warrant.

I never cease to be amazed at how the vast majority of people can stumble through life completely deaf and blind to what goes on around them or what has gone before. If you don’t know where you’ve been how can you possibly know where you are going?

but you never tend to hear about it.

In much the same way that you never hear about the pogroms in the Soviet Union both before and after the Second World War, or the treatment of German PoWs by Soviet authorities. Or, if we want to be really damning, the treatment of the German people by their own government from 1933 to 1945.

Not forgetting that the Americans and British came up with the idea of concentration camps as we know them, in the Civil War and Boer War respectively. Try Googling “Andersonville”.

This any good? (Link)

I do think that there is a general tendency to dismiss history, however recent, as being irrelevant if you didn’t live through it, but to my mind it’s an incredibly blinkered approach to take.

I’m not suggesting that everyone should be able to reel off dates, names, places and event and know the minutiae of each one, but history tells us why the world is like it is, why people behave as they do and how everything came about.

To not know this, or not want to know, is criminal negligence in my book.

events like the Wannsee Conference, the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos, and various other

I would be lying if I said I had heard of any of those ?

The Wannsee Conference took place at the Wannsee villa in Berlin on the 20th January 1942. It was chaired by SS Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich (the so-called Butcher of Prague) who was tasked by Hermann Goering to promulgate a “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” – in otherwords to come up with a framework and timetable for the extermination of the Jews within the German Reich. Attendees included Adolph Eichmann and Rudolf Hoess (not to be confused with Rudolf Hess, who was by that time in the Tower of London) who eventually became commandant at Auschwitz. It took the conference a little over 90 minutes to finalise it’s plans. It is from this that we get the euphemism, “Final Solution”.

The Warsaw and Lodz ghettos were walled prison camps within those cities where the Jewish populations were coralled so that they were under full control of the SS, SD and Gestapo. At it’s peak, the Warsaw ghetto covered about 1,3 square miles but was home to around 400,000 people who attempted to survivie in the most appalling conditions, on average 9.2 people per room. The ghettos were eventually cleared en masse and the occupants transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau for liquidation.

I have to admit that what we learned at school was only a small part of the whole and only covered the basics; but I think to claim total ignorance beggars belief.

Think it’s bad with people of our generation, the yoof is even more insular and uninterested in anything outside their bubble. Maybe it’s always been like that, feels like it’s getting worse. In the past with less media to go to, i.e. basically telly / radio people would end up picking up information and news by accident as it was bundled with other content. These days with the ability to fine tune your content consumption, if it doesn’t appear in your twitterer feed you don’t hear about it.

I hear what you are saying, but the guy’s the same age as me give or take – I covered the basics of it at school way back when, so surely he must have had some similar exposure to it?

At times, TV coverage of it (especially at significant anniversaries) is pretty much at saturation level. It simply is one of those events that we cannot ignore or be allowed to be forgotten so I can’t get my head round how he’s managed to completely bypass it (or at least profess to have no knowledge of it).

What was also significant was that the lad who was working behind the bar was pretty shocked about my mate’s level of knowledge too, and he’s only in his early twenties.

Nelson

Very large Asian population, large areas, particularly the town centre, very run down. Not a nice place in general. Outskirts OK (Halifax Road area to the South, Barrowford/Wheatley Lane/Fence/Higham to the North).

Bacup

Again, pretty run down, full of Goth-murdering psychopaths. Best feature is the road out of town. Plus Lee Quarry is in Bacup if you like that sort of thing.

Brierfield

See Nelson

Colne

Upmarket version of Nelson. Given the choice I’d rather live here, but there’s not a lot in it. Colners are reknowned for being aggressive, tattooed tarmac-layers. And that’s just the women.

Clitheroe

Nice, if a bit blue-rinse. Expensive property, residents fairly up themeselves. Consider if a die-hard Conservative voter.

Clayton Le Moors, Haslingden, Great Harwood.

Just no…

I would +1 the Cliviger, Worsthorne and Hurstwood areas of Burnley. It’s close enough to the town to be convenient for shopping and services, but the upside is you’re literally 5 minutes ride from all the Calderdale trails. Property tends to be a bit pricey but that’s subjective, innit?

Burnley gets a bad rep, but bear in mind that it was voted the Most Enterprising Town in Britain lately and that must count for something. There’s a LOT of development work going on at the moment and while the town has it’s moments it’s not all bad. Don’t rule it out.

My MR2 is Dynamatted throughout, but that’s mainly to stop sound escaping from the mahoosive install… :twisted:

I wouldn’t do it because there’s no weld on the inside. Strictly speaking a welded aluminium frame is a monocoque because the heat treatment after welding raises the temperature of the crystalline structure to a level where the whole frame becomes a homogeneous mass rather than several parts joined together with weld.

But unless the welds have a backing run on the opposite face, it’s likely that there will be far less material in these areas and they will still be a weak point.

Cannondale used to smooth the welds by building them up much bigger than they needed to be before dressing them smooth and then heat treating. This is why Cannondales used to be so horrendously expensive back in the day because the process was incredibly time consuming.

Thats said, you did say it was your other half’s bike, so crack on!

Wearing black on the road is symptomatic of the “it’ll never happen to me” culture, viz –

1) I wear black because it looks good (read as, I’m incredibly vain);
2) Wearing light or bright colours is gay (read as above, plus not at ease with my sexuality);
3) If I get knocked off by a driver, it won’t be my fault (read as, I’m not prepared to take responsibility for my own actions – I can always blame someone else);

It’s the same set of factors which drives the “I never wear a helmet because it’ll ruin my hair/make me sweaty/look like a nonce/not do any good/I don’t ride fast enough to do any damage if I do fall off”.

Self preservation is a good thing, as is taking responsibility for your own actions rather than blaming everyone else.

I’m not advocating head to toe flouro, god no; but everything I can do to make myself more visible, I will. White and blue are my choices for daylight riding, but as has already been mentioned, reflectivity and lighting take priority at night.