Which one’s yours?

My picture is this one\

Why can’t I take photo’s like you (& the others)

I am willing to bet you can. The only thing you need to do differently is know the picture you want to make before you make it. Treat it like you are painting a picture, where you do not know what that picture is going to be and it doesn’t exist before you have envisioned and created it.

You’re very brave (as are all artists) for letting part of yourself be put on display for all to see.

Ivan is the really brave one here.

It’s been a very revealling process. I’ve experienced periods in my life where I was under great duress (as an adult; as much or more so than as a child) and it precipitated some behaviours and beliefs that whilst I’m not ashamed of, were challenging to the mainstream and caused conflict with other.

I’ve learned through this process that the points of mass interaction are where the problems lie; any ideology that tries to identify group trends might well identify group trends that are accurate, but the moment you use those insights in your direct and personal connections with people, you run into great problems.

Working with Ivan has taught me to recognise the humanity of the person in front of me; I find that helps a great deal with conflict resolution in general.

FWIW, I find the ramp test to be the most bearable.

There are things worse than a ramp test? What cruel, barbaric device could be worse than a ramp test? 😳

but I’m wondering if I’ve just overestimated how hard a Zone 3 workout should fee

You should be able to ride at tempo for the best part of a day, it should feel comfortable but not easy. To give an example, my HR Max used to be about 191 (at age 46) and I could maintain 150 or about 80% (Zone 3) of that for five hours.

there goes any hope of right to die

We should probably call the ‘right to die’ movement for what it really is, which is the ‘right to require a medical professional end my life’ movement.

Phone checked in at registration and handed back at the end of the day would be one rule I enact if I were the head teacher along with a zero tolerance and, bordering on heavy handed, approach to bullying. Like I say, it’s a trigger for me as it’s something I experienced as a child at school also.

Slightly misquoted,

You know you’re probably right; it might not be a criminal offence so much as it is some other type of offence I don’t know the legal definition of.

My replies have been to a specific statement by the op that a criminal offence has been carried out

You’re abslutely right to point this out – there are several levels at which an offence might have been committed, ranging from the relatively benign – a picture of someone made and shared without permission in a place where they have a right to privacy – through to an indecent picture of a child, made and shared through a public communications network.

The question you ask is important; I cannot give you the specific legislation that covers it but it falls under the Human Rights Act and is explained here:

To reiterate, I do not know if the video footage was ‘indecent’ (and I do not know what the legal definition of that term even is though of course, at the extreme end, it is fairly obvious), and neither does my friend. We just know that a video was made of her son in the changing rooms whilst he was getting changed.

It might not show nudity but it most definitely has humiliated him to the point where he does not want to attend school.

voyerism needs a sexual gratification

This sounds right but the taking and publishing without consent, of an image in a place where the subject has a reasonable right to privacy, is a criminal act.

A five year interest free loan for £20k? Please can you tell me where this is available as it sounds too good to be true.

If inflation is running at 5%, then £20k this year is £21k next year and £22k the year after. By the end of five years it’s almost £25k. So the simply fact that this loan is interest free means whoever is giving it to you is going to lose £5k in five years.

Except, no one is that stupid, so you’re obviously paying for it somewhere else. Is this a car that costs £20k today but which last year was only £15k by any chance and the financing is coming fromt he dealership?

The comments have been very useful thank you indeed.

Vengeful? My point there was just that; the right and wrong of this incident is different to how angry you feel and how far you would want your anger to drive retribution. It’s precisely why we don’t let victims have a say in sentencing, because vengence is a terrible thing that needs tempering.

I do not know the nuance in this case, just that making and sharing an image of someone in a place where they have a right to privacy is a crime (I am certain of this because of my photography work); it is entirely possible that the video is not indecent in anyway, just deeply shaming. If it is indecent, then that is a whole other issue but I just don’t know and to be honest neither does the mother.

A crime has definitely been committed and it needs to be treated very seriously. How seriously is dependent on the nature of the video captured and shared I guess but even at it’s most benign, I think it needs to be treated for what it is.

‘Wood impregnation 100% penetration’ into google.

That’s genius (and you expect us to believe it was unintentional ?) 😂😂

Rega speakers and electronics are vastly underrated. Good choice 👍

Are you a tory mp?

My social proclivities lean to the left/are libertarian but I guess as an alpha male with a high sex drive I guess I don’t really fit the hand wringing wokey lefty beta male prototype 😂.

Well that’s a bold claim

Only if you interpret it as ‘regularly watch porn at work’ rather than ‘ever watched it at work’; my suggestion is the latter, and I’m fairly sure it’s accurate.

These days ‘at work’ also means something different. At work is perhaps less vexatious than ‘in a work environment’.

Not only is it not a good idea, most companies would probably sack the person watching it.

Hence it’s not a good idea. On your own device in a toilet is one thing. In a public debating chamber is a different kettle of booty. 🤦‍♂️

Naim may be less fatiguing for longer listening sessions.

Ironically Naim electronics have a reputation for being extremely fatiguing. I used to have a full stack of Naim electronics (which I was subsequently obliged to sell) and when I was building my system again ten years later I auditioned a system several levels above what I’d had and found myself thinking ‘oh for goodness sake give it a test’.

Made my ears bleed.

For gods sake he should admit it and whilst he’s at it point out that 99% of men and probably 50% of women (or maybe more) use pornography on a regular basis. And whilst it’s not a good idea to watch it at work (but let’s also be honest the proportion of people who have done that is likely almost as high as those that use it generally), it’s no more an indictment of what’s wrong with the world than watching TV.

This is an excellent appraoch to adopt; it’s called ‘fatigue training’ and is recognised as an excellent way to traing the body to burn fat; since your glycogen reserves will be depleted the body will more readily turn to fat as an energy source.

A cup of good strong coffee also helps that process (apparently it’s the cafeine that stimulate the fat burn).

For the winter of 2014/15 I was training for a race season and would ride into London from Horsham (about 100km round trip, 60km in and 40km back including Box Hill). My ride in was always on an empty stomach but a good cup of coffee. I’d leave around 6am and get into London by around 8am.

I’ve been in peoples houses where they just have one really fancy and expensive speaker

Just out of curiosity, what have you heard? I’d be interested to explore.

Not overly keen on Sonos sound seems a bit too processed

This is an excellent observation; yes they are but the problem is that all these one box systems that have become popular lately have that problem and it comes down to the same thing; Class D amplification. There’s no doubt Class D has come a very long way and at the high end, I believe it can sound very good (though I have not heard anything at that level myself). But all the cheaper products, including the £1000+ Naim products, use Class D and it makes them sound dry and, as you say, very over processed.

Yes the higher end Naim units don’t sound as bad as the cheaper Sonos or Apple Pod examples, but if you’re used to something like a Class AB separates system (or perhaps even Class A!) then all those one box units will have the same issue for you.

You’ll also struggle with the lack of any spatial/stereo dispersion or soundstage; they all have point source like presentations, unsuprisingly of course. They clearly have a place as otherwise they wouldn’t make them, but I suspect that place is more for those wanting to trade up a little from say an Apple or Sonos system rather than someone who actually apprecaiate what a half decent separates system can do but wants something smaller.

Perhaps a better option would be smaller bookshelf speakers with a one box unit from Naim or Devialet (which of course are much more expensive!) Otherwise perhaps swallow the Sonos/APple pill and just accept that they won’t be that much worse than the much more expensive Naim unit.

My neighbour, Obert, originally a son of Zimbabwe, taken on the anniversary of that country’s independence.

Obert by Greg Turner[/url], on Flickr

the Naim app (installed on an iPad) I find is pretty crap though (at least using it with Tidal)

It is indeed pretty rubbish! This is where Roon scores so highly as the interface is brilliant – extremely rich in data, easy to navigate and flexible across devices so you can control everything from your phone, tablet, laptop etc.

@FuzzyWuzzy the Muso 2 is Roon ready so you always have the option of using that as an interface controller.

What is the advantage of a streamer?

It’s a great question, one I asked myself two years ago when I built my current system. The answer is genuinely very simple; a dedicated streamer is just like a CD transport and on that basis the question makes more sense. How much does a good/great CD transport make to the overall fidelity of a system? A great deal (sorry to use the term ‘transport’ but it’s needed because most streamers don’t output an analogue signal so you still need a DAC).

I order a dedicated custom built streamer/server when I built my system and it was the last piece to arrive. I waited for about six months for it to be built and in the interim I used my Macbook pro with a digital output into my DAC. The difference that adding the dedicated streamer/server made was huge, about the same as adding a £20k pre-amp did (the server was £7k).

A streamer/server (they usually do both jobs and both jobs are the same, just from different sources, one being the internet, the other a hard drive but ostensibly they are retrieving data and making it ready for a DAC to decode into an analogue signal), is a source component just like any other, and just like any source component, a dedicated unit, or one built very carefully into say a pre-amp (and there are some amazing pre-amps with both streaming and DAC module built in), improves things vastly over a more compromised design. Noise is the principle problem to overcome, then the power supply but the software used to run the process make a huge difference.

My own streamer/server gets regular firmware tweaks from the designer (IT genius who runs his own business building dedicated servers for HiFi geeks like me) and the improvements are always noticeable.

‘headline as a question’

Add to that the ‘question as an accusation’ gambit, which politicians have been dining out on for years also!

I cannot think of a single development in the world of music playback and listening that has given me more joy than the ability to stream; my tastes run to high end audio playback so the quality of the playback is a key part of the listening experience and enjopyment (but I listen to music through a wide variety of sources including Apple Music via my phone and apple airpods and in my car).

I do have all 800 CDs now stored as soft copies on an internal drive on my streamer/server (the difference between streaming and serving is the difference between playing a source taken from an internet connection versus one from an internal hard/NAS drive), but that combined with subscription to Qobuz (basically a high res version of Spotify or APple Music), along with Roon as the interface, has vastly expanded my ability to discover and enjoy new music.

If you’re not interested in exploring new music (versus your existing library) there might still be benefits to having your CDs stored as soft copies but the value is much more limited (space, convenience, searching and finding what you want etc). Really streaming is about the ability to discover a whole new world of music you never knew existed; it really is a joy to behold!

Volvos have always had a reputation for pricey main dealer servicing but a 2.5 times difference between a main dealer and the independent sounds more like one is quoting for a routine oil and filter change and the other is quoting something much more substantial. At 150k miles I would assume it’s the latter so worth exploring. Either that or the name ‘Arnold Shark’ is the more relevant component to the quote!

EDIT – the price from the main dealer may well include a DPF, which would be where the extra £600 comes from. That’s about how much they cost!

How about aboot? I love that word.

I thought everyone on here, but me, was a bot, and I still need some convincing that they’re not.

I can fix that for you

Isn’t that the definition of gullible?

No it’s the definition of ‘agreeableness’.

Bot or no bot, someone programmed that content and therefore it represents a perfectly valid idea. The problem is not the ideas expressed by bots but rather their prevalence and that is ONLY a problem if your view of the world is based on prevalence, which of course almost everyone’s view of the world is. It’s the ‘system one’ versus ‘system two’ heuristic, which we are all prone to.

If you train yourself to operate more in system two, then the prevalence of otherwise minority or automated bot ideas is neither here nor there.

Must have overtaken 500 or do in a day. I assume it’s a nice place to ride but it’s a nightmare in a car

Mallorca is destination #1 for spring riding roadies. It’s also where a lot of the pro-European teams have their winter training camps. It is to roadies as Morzine/Les Gets is (or was) to mountain bikers.

Funny how back in 2010, larger wheeled bikes just didn’t look right, and now 12 years later when our brains have adjusted and they’ve dialled in the aesthetics and got the proportions right for 27.5/29, small wheeled bikes don’t look right.

Doesn’t change the fact that the Cotic BFe was always a very sweet bike.

It’s a mark of respect that he asked you this. It shows he thinks your capable and he wants to engage you.

On this forum it might just be to see how good it is getting. It was a good few posts in before it started to smell. Tweak the algorithm, repeat, see how far you get

Sort of like a Turing Test.

You maybe need to hang out on Swinging sites rather than Dating Apps 🙂

What on earth makes you think I don’t already? 😆

On a serious point though, the idea that you would only ever vote for one party is at best myopic and at worst the trait of an ideologue. The party you vote for should be the party that is best for everyone at the time the election is taking place and that might change depending on the prevailing conditions.

People who only ever vote for one party, i.e. without considering whether the alternatives might not be in everyone’s best interests, are voting in a very selfish and blinkered way IMO. That is not to say that if you do always vote one way, that that’s wrong; it’s only the unwillingness to consider the alternatives with an open mind that I believe makes for a poor choice.

call out shitbags and that doesn’t sit well with ‘mainstream conservative opinions’.

I really don;’t know what makes you think it’s acceptable to call people that in a public forum. Even if you’re not directly addressing any individual in particular, you are demonstrating a level of bigotry that is sadly poisoning the political left currently and making it hard for moderate/centrist voters to vote that way.

If you want to understand why Le Pen is currently vying for office then you can draw a pretty much straight line between attitudes like yours and the rise in popularity of far right politics; it’s a ****you’ response. Same thing happened with Trump and Brexit. Even where the party you oppose is genuinely alienating people it does not serve democracy well to adopt such a dismissive and hate filled attitude.

Part of the 80’s gang of yobboes who put in place the attitudes that got us where we are today.

Can no more accuse the Tories of this than you can Labour.

Mainstream conservative opinions are hardly ever aired on here these days

LOL you should see what it’s like on dating apps – the single most common refrain on profiles (apart obviously from ‘not into ONS’) is ‘no Tories’ (I’ve voted for all three main parties in general elections so not sure if that counts?)

Yes he passed away a few years back. He is buried in a beautiful natural cemetery on the South Downs.

Oh that’s very sad, but not wholly unexpected I guess. I can imagine his funeral must have been quite something to attend.

mandog, Trouty died a while ago,

Always sad to read something like that. I was just thinking reading this thread is a bit like reading the obituary pages but that’s a little too close to home. There was a chap on here years ago (i had a ten year break) maybe around 2006, who had a rare form of bone cancer. I can’t remember his name, maybe ‘Bullheart’ but his posts were always quite inspirational. I fear to ask the outcome of his situation but would like to know all the same.

A very interesting experiment but is it correlation or causation

It’s correlation but, and my stats is extremely rusty, an R value of 0.7 ostensibly means 50% of all violent crime and homicide can be explained by wealth inequality. They are related and it’s not hard to see where the causal factors lie; humans tend towards avarice and resentment of others especially around resources and access to them, which tends to provoke violence, in part, as a way of gaining access to those resources. Gang membership and the violence that goes with it is another example of the wealth inequality effect. When you have no other legitimate way of accessing social status, when those legitimate forms are not available to you, gang membership offers a substitute. There is a huge amount of status to be derived from gang membership, not to mention affiliation and access to strong male, and sometimes female, role models.

But what happens when people don’t have the resources to pay for these high prices anymore due to the economic downturn?

The risk is not that there won’t be enough buyers, the risk is that there will be fewer buyers but still enough to compete and keep prices high. Economic hardship is usually an opportunity for those that survive to thrive; it’s what causes the Gini co-effecient to increase. This is my theory and I’m not an economist. My (very smart) economist best friend however does indeed firmly believe that we are headed for an almight house price correction (she runs a very successful Private Equity fund and is so paid on her ability to, at some level, predict long run macro-economnic trends!)

I am a little intrigued as as to why you would join a mountain bike forum specifically to post this, if you don’t own a bike? Not having a pop, honest. Just curious.

I get that you’re not having pop and perhaps the answer is that this is a well established community of people that has evolved so far from it’s original focus that it has become something more. It’s a testimony to (modern) community that a group of people with only a fleeting connection to a shared interest should register loudly enough in the digital space that it eventually attracts members with no connection to cycling.

Seems like an opportune time to share one of my all time favourite folk songs:

My dad taught this to my brother and I as kids (walking over Kinder) along with the story of the mass tresspass. We sung it at his funeral.