http://www.canecreek.com/tech-headsets
– you might find it there.

Without knowing exactly which headset it is, that gold ring either came off the top end – and helps to centralise the upper bearing race on the steerer when everything is snugged up- or it sits directly against the forks and the bottom bearing race sits against it, and I'd expect you to have somthing similar for the top end.

I suspect that if it came off the bottom end, you've remember taking it off the forks.

Did you, by any chance, leave a ring-like thing sitting at the fork end of the steerer tube when you sold 'em ? Cos you need that for the new forks – it's (effectively) the crown race.

Re steerer, yup, cut to length, exact length will depend on headset (they vary), number of spacers between stem and headset, length of headtube.

The part left inside the steerer is the SFN (Star Fangled Nut) – you can't easily get 'em out anyway. You can buy a new one (a little fiddly to fit straight without the right tool or some tubing) or plug-type placement (eg Hope Hed Doctor – and if you get one, read the instructions carefully…).

Don't forget the upper can only *preloads* the bearing stack with the stem bolts loosened to removed bearing play, it's doing up the stem clamp bolts that holds it together – it's not unheard of for people to get that wrong 'cos they haven't thought about it.

'Course, taking a piccie or sketching it out first might have saved you some trouble 😉

Kinda what a few others have said..

Go to the doc first to get in motion getting a specialist referral through the nhs – you might need an arthroscopy to see what's going on, whether it's ligament or cartiliage damage. In addition, see a physio/sports injury bod anyway, there's gonna be some waiting time with the nhs route.

Don't overdo it now – you might be hurting the chances of a better recover later if there is some damage that needs fixing.

If you fancy the Forest of Dean:
http://www.whitemead.co.uk/campingcaravanning/index.php?pn?pn

– it's owned/run by the Civil Service Motoring Association (members typically Civil Service plus what used to be Civil Service – BT, Post Office) – looks like it takes Joe Public too now.
Haven't been there for years but the facilities were pretty good then and I'm sure they will be now.

BTW – it's wasn't mentioned, but the reason you can't interchange brake/gear cables is they're different gauges due to the difference in tension – brake cables are thicker. Likewise the cable sheath/outer is different too – brake cable is a helical winding of steel that won't compress, whereas a brake outer is just reinforced with steel wire along it's length.

(and all the shifters I've ever bought have come with cable, fwiw..)

A few points about having have a beard, from my point of view:

a) shaving rash – doesn't matter what I do, shaving more than about twice a week leaves me with a face of raw meat or spots, and I've been shaving for about 32 years, so I don't think it'll 'settle down' anytime soon ! The only razor type I haven't tried is a cutthroat.

b) I'm a metalhead. Which in my book means long hair, decent beard of some style, or both.
I had a short goatee for years before I decided to do the job properly..now it's really quite a long goatee (tho' it got to about it's maximum length after about 6 or 8 months). It does get a trim from above the lower lip, otherwise it's in yer soup, beer etc, not to mention gets a bit wayward. Everything from chin downward can be coaxed kinda where it needs to be.

c) Having shaved off long hair a few times in the very distant past and later regretted it (and indeed, never needed to, as it transpired) I've finally take the view if an interviewer doesn't like it, then they're the sort of narrow-minded individual I wouldn't want to work for anyway.
View it as a dickhead filter, if you like..

IMO if it's a decent beard, trimmed, it shouldn't look scruffy as such.
But then I'm biased 😉

Well, people tend to divide between a pear (put weight on hips/legs) and apple (put weight on belly), but I'm not sure that's the whole story.

Some years ago (20?) – I noticed a mate, whose a similar build/shape, getting a pot belly, so from then on I tried maintaining a just a bit of tension in the abdomen – not sucking it in, but not letting it bulge out either. I *guess* – must admit I've never asked anyone – that a lot of guys (or women for that matter) just let hang out relaxed, which would accentuation any extra weightiness round the middle.

Fat also gets deposited around the internal organs, so that probably wouldn't help.

Re situps – can be bad at just causing the more external muscles to bulge. Probably more use is crunches (upper abs), plank/prone (middle abs) – the latter you're trying to pull your belly button back to your spine using the deeper muscles. Check out Pilates too, that's mostly core stability work (I've been doing that for about 7 years or so)

>I look like an extra from LOTR

I had the little scrotes at the stations near work referring to me as 'Gimli' – didn't know whether to laugh or give 'em an earful. Tho' I do look like a metal band's roadie, being a bit of a metalhead 😉

Stats – 40chest, 76kg, 31-33" waist (depends on how much or little cycling), 5'10, I'm 46)

At our last place I found a small pile of late 60's/early 70's Playboys in one corner of the loft. Would have left them for posterity (posterior?), but the ignorant tart* buying the place had 'plans' for the place as she rudely put it, so they'd have go binned.

The removals guys found it amusing 😉

*my OH would probably be less kind..

First you've got to get a harvest 😉

We inherited a small vine when we moved house – every year so far (4) the grapes have picked up a fungal growth before they've ripened, it'd be worth keeping a close eye on 'em, or even spray/treat them before they get that far.

As hitman said, you just (!) need to break it into manageable chunks – have a search for 'transcription program', there's probably a few freeware ones worth trying, it's useful if you can put a start and end marker in a track and get it to repeat between 'em..I used to used an old cassette deck which did that, a *very* long time ago..

(I splashed out on something called 'Amazing Slower Downer' for the pc a while back – about 40 quid, but it's a good little tool, probably the best of the bunch at v. slow replay, you can set start and end markers to repeat between, dump a slowed version of the original track to mp3, etc).

I must admit I'd probably find the single note stuff in that track hard to remember. It's basically a bunch of riffing away on the blues scale, but there's no real harmony line running through it to make it memorable. But – breaking it down bit by bit still applies – there's gonna be discrete phrases/groupings of notes in there that he's thinking of, and he's linking them together so it's pretty much one long run. Theres a few pauses in there that help a little to divide it up.
(I'm looking at this one : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e48BZjXQAZM )

I guess at a basic level there's a few things re improvisation – one is thinking of a note and knowing where it is automatically on the fretboard (there's some eartraining applications on the web that might help – ie learning how the interval between notes sounds), the other is knowing what scale you can use (ie chords in the tune), plus also set licks – there's a whole lot of standard short phrases/turnarounds in blues based stuff, just knowing those helps in recognising by ear what's being played. Usually they've got set fingerings, too, which helps them have a particular rythmic flavour. Often just listening to a phrase and noting how the notes within it fall out timing-wise is easier to understand than reading tab. For example, I transcribed Kravitz's 'Are You Gonna Go My Way' a while back, and that divides up nicely into short sections that link together – give it a listen and you might see what I mean. I found it easier to work out myself than trying to understand the tab (which was wrong anyway !), tho' there were one or two phrases which were initially a bit harder to get the timing correct on – more practice !

If you listen to any Rush off the first album you'll find the same – the solos are mostly blues 'cliches' hooked together, and it's the timing/combinations/phrasing which make it sound interesting.

If you're struggling to learn the track in terms of losing interest, perhaps find something that is easier to learn – it doesn't necessarily mean easier to play, just something that's easier to remember.

Right, time for supper, crap tv and bed – got back from the gym earlier and I still haven't stuffed my face !

Click the 'sale' tab, and under that you can select 'flood item only'
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Offers.aspx

Good timing, I needed some more brake pads :)- cheers !

>trained classical musician
A mate's wife is one, can he get her to to play along to anything without music ? No. Bizarre if you ask me…

>I worked out a practice regime which worked wonders
Hitman – any useful hints ?

I've generally got something I'm working on, but I suffer a similar sort of thing to a degree – most of my practice tends to be just trying to improve/maintain technique. I spent a lot of time record-copying/transcribing years ago, while it helps fluency and linking things up it doesn't necessarily help learning the fingerboard.
Tho' having said that, I wound up transcribing a few tunes/solos recently for a covers band I was in with some mates, having an aim in mind does help somewhat. In fact, that was the fun bit, most of the tunes we did otherwise were party fodder…

I'd say your playing looks quite promising 🙂

Dunno if you've done this already, but there are plug-ins around that allow you to save flv (youtube) files from your browser for later playback ('fraid I dunno what the best free one is at the moment, tho')

Apologies if it's a bit obvious, but to add to guitarmanjon's info, practice what you find hard, not what you can already do – isolate what's going wrong and practice 'til it's perfect (as mentioned, starting slowly..). One tip I've heard is practice not til you can get it right, but until you never get it wrong (tho' it might drive you 'round the bend in the meantime !)

Also – it's far harder to correct an ingrained habit later, than getting it right to begin with. One guy I had a lesson or two with tried to get me to swap from a kinda economy picking style to alternate picking 'cos I'd occasionally hit things twice. Probably a better approach would have been to have fixed my existing method – relearning to alternate pick screwed my picking up for about 10 years, and even now my hand occasionally gets hung up between the two styles as if it doesn't know which it's doing. (I think it's Marty Friedman that has some utter abortion of a right hand style, but it works !)

I didn't pick up much theory for years but wish I had – it's useful in that, for a lot of rock, if you know what the melody is, you can generally work out what the chords might be (or vice versa). It can get a lot more complicated than that (blues does something a bit different), but it's a starting point.

For example, a lot of rock (old-school metal in particular) throws in the blues scale in with what's effectively the major scale (Metallica and Rush certainly do). A lot of neoclassical stuff (Yngwie, etc) uses harmonic minor and diminished scales, which is why they sound so distinctive – there's quite a few Rush tunes that might too (probably the run at the beginning of La Villa Strangiato for example) – 'fraid my ear/memory isn't good enough to know offhand.

The one nugget of theory that I didn't see written anywhere for years is how you form chords from a scale – have a search for 'harmonised scale'. There's decent explanation here:
http://www.torvund.net/guitar/index.php?page=Th_harmscale

Once you've got your head round that, you'll see how the chords for an awful lot of songs fit together.

>Hot baths increase blood flow therefore helping the inflammation.

Err, no, they increase the swelling/bruising.
IIRC after 2 or 3 days you can swap from ice packs to hot baths

Google for 'rest ice compression elevation'

>steel sleeve fitted

I *think* it's Argos that will do that.
Dunno what number you need to take to the checkout tho' 😛

I renewed* ours a while back – found a few things:

a)*not exactly – it's cheaper to take out a new policy on the web than renew an existing policy ! Or at least, it was at the time…
b) there's two levels of cover under M&S, I *think* both have similar bike cover, but best to check.
c) Waitrose have their own policy which seems to sit at the level of the cheaper M&S policy, or mebbe slightly above, cover-wise. I think both this and M&S use Axa.

HTH

Edit :
>Then ring them up with details of the quote
I tried that, but was told they couldn't change the renewal quote ! Mebbe enough other people have suggested that their management are numpties, that they'll now do it 😉

I'd be inclined not to use WD40:
penetrating oil (WD40 etc) works ok on steel vs steel, the rust is pretty weak and a bit more porous. Ally vs steel, the ally oxide expands into the gap and isn't permeable.

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/stuck-seatposts.html

looks like ammonia helps to dissolve the oxide (think there's a few other possibilities too) – lobbing wd40 down might stop that working.
Tho' your lbs will probably use brute force, rather than chemistry.

FWIW, on one mate's bike (ally vs ally) it took about an hour of assorted violence, on another (ally in a steel frame) we wound up cutting along the length of the post – 3 slots eventually, with only one slight groove in the seattube butting. Took about 3 hrs 🙁
That'll learn 'im not to ride in the sea 😮

>dont think the Grammar school system would help
It does to the extent that you're more likely to start with an intake that have some degree of self-motivation, rather than a bunch of kids who don't care (or equally, their parents don't)

If you have to rely on a bunch of shoddy local comps you're a bit stuffed. Bizarrely, in Richmond on Thames where a mate lives, the primary schools are good and used by the (well-off) locals but the secondary schools aren't that great, so parents send their kids to fee-paying secondary schools. And to keep the numbers up in the state schools, kids are bussed in from Roehampton (some of it's not the most salubrious of areas in sw London) – which makes the well-off locals even less likely to send their kids to the state schools. How you break that I dunno – but the basic problem is, if parents (quite reasonably) judge a school on it's results, given a set of pupils whose basic ability (regardless of background) is never gonna be stellar, the schools results still won't be outstanding.

Think I know where tankslapper's coming from (tho' to be fair I think comps have improved) – I was lucky enough to go to a small local grammar in the 70's. The following year, the idiot Labour Birmingham council in their dogmatic view of grammars turned a whole lot comp, including mine. Ironic, since a good proportion of the kids that got there were from a working class background, so all they did was bugger it up for mostly working-class kids. But they didn't dare touch the King Edwards grammars.
At the time there were GCEs and CSEs (the latter a lower attainment version, if you like), almost no-one in our year of ~120 kids was doing CSE in anything, the following comp year I don't think anyone was doing GCE maths, at least.
At one point the (grammar) 6th form were warned not approach some of the kids hanging around their common room 'cos they might pull a knife 😮
Certainly some of the teachers left in the next few years, I suspect as a direct result.
The bigger comps were at least capable of doing some of streaming…then again it was kids from those schools that occasionally would turn up at our gates, trying to pick a fight with the grammar kids !

>heavier SRM power cranks

Ah, I'd vaguely heard of these but hadn't realised they were in much actual race use.

I probably should have qualified that – it may be a case of diminishing returns relative to just using the rotor chainrings, vs using the weight difference on other components/frame, in terms of longevity/handling. I'm pretty sure it's been possible to build a frame below the weight that the regulations imply for some time, whether you'd want to is another matter.

>note that no rotork sponsored riders

I'd guess because there's going to be some weight penalty.
Not to mention the UCI would find some way of banning 'em !

Ah, looks like the new UCI regs effectively do:
"The bicycle must be in “working order” with a steering system acting on the steerable wheel and a propulsion
system acting on the driven wheel by means of a circular movement through a chainset (using a chain) comprising one or more chainwheels and two cranks, arranged opposite each other, one as an extension of the other, in the same plane. "

(from http://www.bentrideronline.com/messageboard/showthread.php?p=503951#poststop)

Yup – write a letter complaining about their lack if interest – IIRC they're obliged to reply – probably worth ccing someone further up the chain too (Chief Constable ? yer MP ?)

I'd certainly report it, it's another number on their crime stats. If people don't report stuff like that, they happily ignore it if it appears low level. Not to mention if there's other assaults in the same area they might be inclined to get off their arses and do something (tho' what, is another matter…)

>dogging

Well, it often involves getting out of yer clothes in carparks on the edge of woodlane, so I guess there's some similarity 😉

No-one's mentioned the *other* darkside…recumbents !

Must say I always thought the term was tongue in cheek…dunno why anyone takes offence to it…equally some folks on one of the (US-centric) recumbent forums seem to think 'roadie' is a perjorative….

Not found what you want searching the forum ? – there's mebbe a dozen vaguely related threads (some very recent), including some useful links.

Not to mention google is your friend 😉 – there's more specific info/forums elsewhere.

some more comparative stuff here vs the 1000H (tho' the 1000HE's mebbe the one to go for – compared to the 1000H it's got a different keyboard layout, bigger battery, slightly faster Atom):
http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=53960

Can't remember which offhand, but the longer-handled Felcos – gives you a bit more leverage if you need it (or a bit easier on yer elbow if you've got tennis elbow..)

Whatever you get, it's handy if it allows the pivot to be tightened – I've a pair of Wilkinson Sword jobbies (and they weren't cheap ones) where the nut's held on position by 4 counterpunched spots…nope, they don't hold 🙁

It's not very helpful, but my other favourites are a) a pair I found in the garden at our previous house, pretty much buried (and I suspect I may have recently done likewise with 'em) b) the pair my parents bought, probably in the 50s – still work a treat.

>Oh, so you're actually playing moving goalposts.

C'mon, you're talking semantics – it was pretty obvious what he meant.

As the last few posts have kinda mentioned, look at the Asus equivalents (well, originals I guess) – they'll probably be cheaper, with better battery life – see the review of chewkw's link.

>Yes, global warming is occuring and I don' think we humans are contributing that significantly (15%)

As an engineer, 'fraid I'll go with the scientific consensus on the best analysis we can currently make, rather than unsubstantiated opinion.

>The world was warmer before

Without any context (specifically, time) that's pretty meaningless. Its the rate of change which is the issue.

>"enjoy it while it lasts"
Oh FFS.
How much *more* painful do you think it's gonna be 10, 20, 100 yrs down the road ? Assuming we're still here, of course.
Basically you're saying screw our descendants and a significant proportion of the flora and fauna we share the world with, yeah ?

>There are too many people in the world and the numbers are growing.

Yeah, but it's the minority of the planet that have been the greedy buggers over the last century and pissed energy reserves, mineral resources, etc up the wall because they've been 'cheap'.
Nothing to do with most of the developing world, and we're expecting them to make much of the cuts via carbon trading and energy efficiency we can't be bothered to do.

That's not what he said at all, certainly yesterday:

"Where I disagree with other people on aviation is if you did 80% cuts across the board, as some people have called for on aviation, you would go back to 1974 levels of flying," he said. "I don't want to have a situation where only rich people can afford to fly."

>Maybe if people could realise that it hasn't always been like this

Exactly !

>a whole chunk of the economy will disappear if we go back to 1970's levels of air travel!

And a whole new area of the economy opens up, *and* keeps UK money within the UK…where do think people travelling abroad are spending it* ?
I can remember the seaside holiday towns of the 60's/70's and they were heaving, especially during summer factory closedowns. Many are in a very sad state now, as a result of cheap air travel. And you can't argue that roasting on a Costa-del-Sol beach (etc) with N thousand other brits is adding much to anyone's 'cultural experience.

*Equally the converse is true wrt to reducing visitor numbers to the UK, but the last time I went to Margate there didn't appear to be many europeans holidaying there….

>We are well and truly F***ed
+1 I'm sorry to say..

I came close to buying one of these:
http://www.maxxraxx.co.uk/Racks/wall_storage.html

– it's one of their towbar racks, but with a wall mount which you can swap out for the towbar mount, or vice versa. Looks pretty damn solid.

Fortunately/unfortunately a bike shop local to work closed about the time I was looking, so I picked up a couple of the Ultimate Support display stands (2 bikes per side) for 50 quid each – they're normally over 130 quid iirc

We've got an A4 Avant 1.9tdi – fair bit of room in the back once the seats are down, I'm guessing around 50 mpg. Used to be the OH's company car – 120 miles a day. Now at ~150k at about 6-7 yrs old and no real indicators of mileage other than disk wear and patchy alloys…first clutch lasted 'til 110k -odd. I think we paid about 4.5k a few years ago.

Re relaxing the neck post-ride, I find a hot flannel often works – or just have a soak in a hot bath.

Do you ride at all otherwise ? ie are the muscles conditioned enough? Does it happen on a road bike ?
You could try relaxing on the bike – it's easy to tense up, and that wouldn't help. Could possibly lift yours bars/shorter stem if you're already doing the other stuff.

I've had trouble with the muscles in my neck going into spasm (the worst was the first time – a month of headaches, physio helped a little but not much) after being far too tense on my road bike years back. A road bike's now too crouched to ride, mtbs are ok. Still occasionally get tension headaches.

Only been there once, and a few years back – mebbe there's some possibilities around the higher but flatter centre – and mebbe to the north/east, but there's so much that's just so bloomin' steep there must be whole areas that must be unrideable, other than on the road

A quick google popped up these:
http://carlosmata.pinkbike.com/album/Marco-Mata-Album/
http://www.loopd.com/Members/JDGomes/Default.aspx

– a few of the place names are on Madeira

Result:
http://www.jernmand.dk/DagbogMadeira2009eng.htm
– but looks like the routes they did were on road, apart from a race in the national park. Mentions a shop in Funchal too:
http://www.bikezone.pt/?co=0&tp=100&cop=0&LG=0&mop=2&it=home
– could try mailing the shop I guess ?

Ah, mtb is BTT, searching on btt madeira has this (plus some other stuff)
http://www.geocities.com/bttmadeira/
http://www.forumbtt.net/index.php/topic,10277.0.html
– looks like a Portugese forum but I guess it's worth seaching for info.

Ooerr:
http://sport.gdubol.com/video/jCJ6Z0iZirU/Downtown-BTT.html
http://madeirabtt.blogspot.com/2006/08/video-downtown-brisa-funchal_03.html

(madeiraoffroad.com ismentioned in that 2nd vid – like it might be useful, including a forum, but my browser's whinging about malware in the last n days or something like that- in fact, ignored it and it looks like the site's temporarily on hold – I guess being fixed)

One tip – wrap the fork stanchions with a towel or bubble wrap 'til yer done.
I was once fitting a caliper with the bike upside down, caliper drops off one caliper bolt whilst I was trying to loctite t'other, swings down and puts a bloomin' big nick in the stanchion 🙁

To be pedantic, it's not a waveguide, but is, assuming it uses twisted pairs or appropriate construction, a transmission line (a waveguide's a type of transmission line).
If the cable is poorly designed, then yes, you'll get rubbish results, and the longer the cable the more likely you'll see that – I imagine there's no certification requirements on cables. But if it's short you'll probably be able to use the cheapest available. A better connector *might* give you a more consistent connection, but it's a bit academic if the connector in the player/tv/whatever is cheap n cheerful.

(FWIW, yup, it's 1's and 0's, but these have to be sampled at the receive end, with the clock the sent over the cable. On a poor/long cable there'll be more signal degradation/time delay between signals in the same cable than on a short/better one, if it bad enough the 1's and 0's will be sampled incorrectly. If anyone's that interested I'll wander off from hassling some USB simulations and dig some specs out…)

>not an exact science
Well, science and engineering, so I'd say measuring the effects, at least, is exact, tho' what your brain picks up is a little subjective. Tho' people seem to want to convince themselves that spending more than a nominal amount on (cheap) decent quality speaker wire works wonders. I'm genuiniely curious as to what the difference was between the cables you tried.
Same thing with bloomin' guitar amps/effects – there's an awful ot lot rubbish spoken about them..if you can't measure/quantify why it sounds better I think there's a bit of self-delusion going on..
(And no, I can't be arsed arguing about it, I'm sure it's been done numerous times elsewhere).

Hope I haven't put anyone to sleep 😉

Ride it like you told it ?

IGMC..

>'Tosh' was killed off in previous series

Ah, thought as much…still have about the last 4 episodes of the last series to watch :0

From what I read Barrowman had said somewhere, he wasn't happy with it being shorter. I must admit it would be easier to completely miss it since it's only on for one week..not to mention it's a pain having 5 hrs worth of episodes clogging up the pvr in one go..

Is there a prize for getting the right number ?
(10 ?)

>Unicycles don't count

Well, they might if you commute on 'em 😛 – I used to do about a mile at each end, to/from stations…

>The suspension bike with the amazing lay back seat post and long shock did it work?

Isn't that just the Maverick (?) design of about 4-5 yrs ago ?

brakes/xcstu – my lbs had one in the window for quite some time…luurvelly. About the only other things around at the time with anything like as nice fillet welding were 'dales – I bought an M600 about then.

Oh, on the retro bike front, saw an (e-stay) Nishiki Alien in Godalming last weekend, haven't seen one for bloomin' years…

I could…but haven't since snowboard lessons in hard boots took their toll on my knees 🙁