A couple of colleagues have just ‘discovered’ corn fed chicken and grass-fed beef and are raving about it. “tastes like meat did when i was a kid” etc.

I think there would be an argument to say that you would be happy with a smaller amount of really good meat in a meal in a restaurant, rather than a large amount of bland cardboardy meat. In the same way that really good cheese is way more satisfying than three times that quantity of cathedral city, and one proper coffee if better than three nescafés (or an infinite quantity of ‘mellow birds’).

rutland cycling apparently have a sale on a load of lake shoes too. Never tried them, mind. As ‘audi’ as they are, specialized shoes fit me just lovely…

I was including this. My understanding is that it takes more land to sustain a veggie diet than it does to support the crops and fields required for a meat-based one (I think it’s in the order of threefold more space required).

I’m basing this standpoint on an article I read in Wired a couple of years back, which looked into what would happen if we all went veggie (I think it was part of some wider ‘green issue’ or something).

I thought it was just the reverse of that:

Energy essentially comes from the sun via photosyntheseis in plants (of course nitrogen fixing etc also plays a part but without sunlight and warmth from sun it would all stop), and the more living things that energy passes through before it gets to your plate, the less ‘efficient’ it is.

If you could survive eating that grain diet that mass-produced cows are fed, you would get far more energy from the grain direct than if you ate a cow that had eaten the same amount of grain.

Also sheep goats and chicken are ace, but a phenomenal amount of methane in the atmosphere is there because mankind has proliferated the poplulation of cows over the centuries.

it will be heavier,

yes if you choose it over someone else’s cartridge bearing hubs. If you stick with the shimano range you need to get xt hubs and those spangly alu spider 6 bolt hubs to get lighter than slx cl and cl rotor for a given rotor size. Weight-for money if you shop around and buy your rotors off the classifieds from someone who doesn’t need them you will get excellent value for money. Hope are of course great, but the cost! If you like qr hubs and are sensible about servicing them its a no-brainer for me.

Splined will always have some slop in it,

7 or 8 centerlok hubs have gone through the wilson household, (currently 5 still on our bikes) and we got slop on 2 of them, which was sorted out with blue ‘pritt stick’ type threadlock and correct torque 🙂 on the lockring.

Perhaps we are lucky but our cl rotors have never needed tweaking whereas 6 bolt ones do from time to time. Can’t say i notice a difference in ‘bite’ changing between cl and hayes/avid/formula rotors on the same brakes/pad/bike.

The 20 and 15mm hubs should be supplied with the lockring which is ludicrously overpriced as a spare from Madison.

Most annoying thing for me would be needing extra tools as the cassette tool needs to be deeper/longer to clear the locknuts on the rear hub so usually means struggling with your old cassette tool before you realise you need a slightly different one. 😕

Oh and my experience of the 20mm front hubs has been rather poor, again you need a specific tool (28mm cone spanner) to service them and its a huge faff getting them to stay done up again.

So if i was buying normal qr hubs I would definitely still go CL over 6 bolt given the positive experience with the 6 we’ve had so far but I really wouldn’t touch the 15/20mm ones again.

and

😀

mmmmm, my (relatively) steep angled mk2 bullit will love that. 😀

Books is the way forward: no mobiles or internet etc allowed.
Depends on the case, some last a few days, some go on for months!

I did a one-day coroner’s jury last year which was eerily close being a busman’s holiday for me: very tragic case and so sad to see the guy’s family there, but actually very interesting for the sort of job i do to see how it looks from the other side of the bench. (well, it was some tables and chairs in a function room in the guildhall but hey ho…)

yunki, what a great story. 😀 Please keep us posted.

The Motherland introduced metric time in 1793.

But it was rather fiddly, invited ridicule from the Brits (plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…) and never caught on. The only traces you would hear of it these days are Émile Zola’s ‘Germinale’ and Lobster ‘Thermidor’ both of which are named after their cranky secular names for months.

Rim or disc brakes? You will need some adapters to use 700c rims in a frame with brake bosses for 26″ wheels. You will need to consider rim width and tyre volume a bit too, but plenty of people have done this before.

If you find some cheapy disc hub wheels for hybrid bikes and the rear hub is only 130 mm, sheldon brown has some advice about spacing out a 130mm hub to go into 135mm dropouts.

Big M – Member

Always ridden push bikes since I was a kid, the quickest way to get around.

+1

Do I lose fan points for selling my copy of their last pretentious ridiculo-vinyl fan-pak on ebay at a huuuge profit?

allthepies, Nutt or Radiohead twaddle?

I think its nice enough, and much more appealing than yet another wordpress style blog, but how are people going to hear about it? I can’t say i would have bothered going to it if it wasn’t posted up by one of the regulars on here.

From the links therein I also seem to have preordered the new radiohead album on ridiculous pretentious arty vinyl. Again. 😳

There’s an ‘h’ on the end of it too you know. 😀

Zulu, where did I defend labour in this thread? Their fox hunting bill was (IMHO) a cynical masterstroke in getting public and parliament all whipped up whilst all sorts of other less newsworthy stuff was taking place out of the eye of the media.

zulu:

Govt announced a public consultation into the future ownership of the PFE

…but it wasn’t really was it? Is that what you really made of the 2011 consultation? Your last post would suggest not. Would a middle-england outcry have made a difference in the 2009 consultation?

An unusually cynical part of me wonders if this policy, which is easy to understand, likely to annoy vocal parts of the population and easy to convey opposition to in the media, was intended as a sacrifical policy?

Like the fox hunting bill/act?

zulueleven, did you actually read the public consultation? It was an insult to the term.

Are we allowed multi-word answers now?

I’m going on the Tony Benn idea that as a nation we are really run by big business and the civil service, and it matters little in the grand scheme of things who we ‘elect’ to govern us.

So hence my ‘no’.

-parliament would be replaced by lots of seasoned local councillors (where we get most of our mp’s from anyway) and the new commons MP’s would continue voting for their parties and their investors err, supporters.

No.

I’m afraid you might be overestimating people’s willingness to admit that they were wrong.

How wrong??

At least enough constituencies made their minds up for Blair and Thatcher’s governments to go in with a majority.

We could have just as easily had a lab/lib government. I wonder if there is a parallel universe with Brown and Clegg in charge?

I miss tandemjeremy a bit right now.

how many people that could have voted actually ever voted for any of our governments? Too lazy to look up voter turnout but I bet even labour’s landslides only had a minority of people with the vote actually get off their bums and vote for them.

So yeah, why should a referendum have different rules?

Look at it this way, if the council stopped picking up litter tomorrow, would we all drown under a sea of litter, or would the great tapestry of society step in and adapt its behaviour to prevent it being a problem?

As a great tapestry of society we can’t even pick up our own dog mess!

what a shame.

I had an insurance replacement bike from Wheelies about 9 years ago, despite it being relatively cheap (best spec spesh hardrock) it was still very well set up, gears and v brakes were perfect and all I had to do was turn the handlebars round and put pedals on. Sounds like your friend’s bike had stickers applied and absolutely nothing else done to it. Uusually online retailers will explain that if it comes all loose and flappy that this is part of the low price. (wiggle did this a while back and mrs julian had a bike from rutland cycling dead cheap like this) 😕

A bit like hunting.

😆

*awaits picture of token BME huntsperson to be posted….

😉 and indeed 😆

plumber – Member

its tuned

well, 5/6ths of it is! Although it is a bit hard to tell with the youtube ubercompressor and with all that chorus on 😉

My own ‘rig’ is well out of date, would have made me semi-cool about 12 years ago but apart from the guitars, its the sort of stuff that goes for a fifth of its original price on ebay these days. Lives under the bed most of the time, supplanted by pocket pod and headphones.

50% of mp’s never ever vote against their party and the rest of them hardly ever do.

My MP is well within the ‘0% rebel votes’ list: I can’t decide whether has no balls or whether the needs of our constituency have always coincided exactly with the opinions and interests of his political party.

‘devil takes the hindmost’ style very-short-track xc at the BBB was very popular with spectators and great fun to race in.

Bowie.

CaptainFlashheart – Member

Meanwhile, in Scotlandshire, TJ is sitting on his hands, frantically trying not to post….

Nice one. 😀 and indeed 😆

You almost managed not to either eh Flashy? 😉

The longer I work in the NHS and for/around the most financially poor and vulnerable people in society, the more lefty I seem to get. So do I do this job because I am a bedwetting bleeding heart socialist, or have I become one by meeting and knowing so many people who have been screwed over by the actions of our last few governments?

I wonder whether if I got a nice job in the financial sector stoner and flashy could help put me straight. 😕

Not a fan of self extractors. When you see how much thread you could engage using a crank puller instead of 4 or 5 threads of relatively flimsy steel or alloy. Last set I had flared outwards instead of pulling the crank off. 🙁

-Normal bolt with coppaslip on threads.
-Nothing at all on square taper bits
-Grease under head of steel crank bolt where it rotates against the inside of the crank as you fasten it.
-Ride for an hour, torque back up again.
-Remove cranks with a good old fashioned crank puller 2 years later when bb dies.

Hurrah!

are they ‘self extracting’ bolts? (ie do you undo the bolt to take the crank off, or do you undo and remove it, and then use a crank puller tool to get crank off the bb spindle?)

Not so bothered about your er, ‘curves’ Nick, but i will bung a fiver in to see that video again of Ton gallavanting around in his shreddies to ‘Welcome to the jungle.’ 😀

greasystain, mrs julian got me that one for crimbo and it proper glows in the dark. 8)

Amen. 😀

Magura, or if you can find any for that money you can’t go wrong with deore 595 or slx. Or old lx or xt 765 for that matter.

Juicys are great when they work but a faff to bleed (you need to buy a kit) and pad changing is also a real, err, ‘experience’… Never tried hayes strokers.

no extra bike is required, any old mid range hardtail will probably be quickest.

but then we don’t need a new bike. 😕 Mashup/avalanche enduro is rarely mentioed in the press without someone gushing about how they couldn’t have done it without their new lightweight 6″ enduro bike.

Good idea in principle though: our mates have pondered with doing unofficial night time trials in our local woods, but we are far too disorganised and the ranger lives there too.

You could ask for ‘un petit café’? 😆

Seriously though, when i lived there, in my local café/bar you got an espresso if you asked for ‘un café’ and you had to get specific if you wanted anthing bigger, browner or frothier.

mrs julian rang leisure lakes a few days ago about finance on a 2011 santa cruz frame after finding it £90 cheaper than anywhere else. When she looked again half an hour later it had gone up to full rrp. We’ll be buying from Stif then, cheers for your help. 😕