Have they got one of these new fangled non-ASCII domain names?

In what way is it cryptic? Is the reply-to address a crossword puzzle?

There is a lamp post on one of the tracks on my local loop comes on at night and everything only trouble it's in the middle of nowhere not a house for miles god knows why its there.

Any wardrobes nearby? Or weird looking statues? Does it snow a lot?

Perhaps someone who knows what they are talking about can offer better advice on 29er tyres. All I can say is I've got a Maxxis Ardent 2.25 on the front, and a Crossmark 2.0 on the back.

They come up to the stated size, seem reasonably fast (but I've nothing to compare against other than 26" tyres) and are sensibly priced. Work tubeless with a track pump on Stan's rims. I managed to tear the sidewall on a Crossmark, but I couldn't say what did it. They've survived the Chilterns without any problems. I'm not the lightest rider around. They are black, and made of rubber.

Were you using the Spesh Captain "Team" or "Control" ? The latter are supposed to have tougher sidewalls (but also seem unavailable in this country).

I think they were being ironic.

In actual fact, these guys are hardcore elite riders. Normally they ride this kind of stuff on a rigid single speed, they are so good, but just for a laugh they made this video.

Why then do roadies prefer a smaller wheel?

Do they? My next door neighbour has a triathlon road bike he bought about ten years ago when 26" wheels were all the rage.

The smaller wheel size means that you accelerate faster, according to the hype. But now, all these bikes have gone back to 700c (much to his annoyance).

Anyway, I don't think TI29er's results should be treated quite so dismissively – there's clearly something going on. Perhaps the real question is how to judge when a 29er will shine, and when to stick to a 26er.

Well, did a different loop this morning. The best time I've managed on the 26" bike was just over 2 hours, on a day that was cool, dry and generally very fast (last year). Usually though it takes between 2h15 and 3h.

This morning the trails were a bit sticky from yesterday's rain, the grass/brambles/nettles were quite long and there was a reasonable breeze later on. Did it in just under 2 hours.

So I guess for some things, a 29er is quite a lot faster.

except the ones with road bars – are they honestly better off-road than risers or flats?

I've got On-One Midge bars, which are wider and shallower than road drops.

I put them on as an experiment, but I kind of like them now. They've not been anywhere really gnarly though (yet).

i know it looks a bit marmite with the lefty on but it rides really well.

Marmite is good 🙂

If your pension fund has bought a load of government debt in order to earn a nice safe rate of interest, then suddenly you're a whole load poorer.

Further down the line, your government will have to pay higher rates of interest on its borrowings. That cost will ultimately come from general taxation.

Fortunately, if you happen to be greek, the cost is borne by german tax payers….

sofaking – that bike is awesome. 29er, drop bars, single speed (?), BB7s – so far so niche. But that fork! Eclectic or what!

29ers look a bit wrong though (most importantly).

Not once you're used to them. Now my iddy-biddy 26" wheels just look silly.

I'll have to do another test tomorrow. In the interests of science.

Stan's arch rims. DMR revolver front and rear (screw-on freewheel). They were built for me by Head for the Hills.

Medium, 5'8. About 32"-33" inside leg.

My feet used to ache if I tied the straps too tight. Restricts the blood flow or some such. Might not be your problem though.

Who now will harvest our potatoes, or buy our horrid over-built houses?

Or look on the classifieds? But check the history of the person you're buying from!

Tommy Flowers, Colossus.

The Government didn't want to know when he proposed building a computer out of valves to crack German Enigma codes, but he went ahead and built it anyway, paying for quite a lot of it himself.

[Hopefully someone who actually paid attention will be along to correct this slightly garbled version].

I am *so* glad I only watched a couple of episodes of this at the start, and spent the time saved in riding my bike!

@richmars

I thought the Cambridge guided busway was mostly funded by central govt, (ie all of us via tax).

Wikipedia says not. £98M from central govt. Another £17M was supposed to come from developers, but they've all gone into hiding. So the council has had to borrow *£60M* to cover the shortfall, and is presumably hoping to recover some of it from BAM Nuttall by arguing about cost overruns and the like in court.

Could pay quite a few teachers with the interest on £60M, even in these days of artificially low interest rates.

Although in practice there's no way they'd spend that on teachers – it would go on digging up bridleways for no good reason whatsoever…..

(But is is a very good cycle track, so long as you don't fall down the gap in the middle.)

It's a *rubbish* cycle track, because no-one can agree which side they should cycle on. If you go down it at rush hour you have to keep getting on and off it 🙂

@richcc – in the case of the Cambs Guided Bus, *lots* of people wrote and complained, went to public meetings, complained some more, and who knows what else.

The county council still went ahead and built the thing, and it's sat there like some great grey slug right now, with no prospect of being opened any time soon, since the council don't have the requisite £30-40M needed to pay the contractors for the extra (disputed) work.

So they're going to fight it out in court for the next few years.

My point? Sometimes there's just an inevitability about these things that can't be stopped. The council is going to spend a ton of money on something useless and no power on earth can stop them.

Cambridgeshire Guided Busway!

Original estimate was about £120M. It's now up to £150M+.

Originally supposed to be in service April 2009.
Then October 2009.
Then spring 2010.
Then a date would be announced at the end of April 2010.

So right now it's the world's most bizarre cycle track.

Amazing number of people use it though!

They eat them in the North.

vim!

Or, better still, ed.

…fit and forget a new set without having to clean and reset pistons.If they say they can do it with never having to do a little extra work then its lies.

With the Shimano deore brakes it's very easy to replace pads and reset the pistons, both in the comfort of your garage and out in the wilds. Pair of pliers (also useful for removing thorns) and a multitool is all you need.

Perhaps other makes are as well (but Avid hydraulics seem to be more of a nuisance in this respect, unless I've not got the technique right).

If all else fails, drill it out.

If it's all just seized solid can't you just put a bigger lever on it? Or is it spinning round uselessly?

Where is it?

Eccentric external bottom bracket?

Ps when did the B of E ever regulate?

Here's what the Bank of England's website says:

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/about/history/major_developments5.htm

In 1997 the Government announced its intention to transfer full operational responsibility for monetary policy to the Bank of England. The Bank thus rejoined the ranks of the world's "independent" central banks. However, debt management on behalf of the Government was transferred to HM Treasury, and the Bank's regulatory functions passes to the new Financial Services Authority.

The economy has been screwed by the bankers

Complete load of old cobblers.

Banks have been scr*wing up royally every decade or so pretty regularly since forever.

In the '70s they poured money into African and South American dictatorships, which all then went bankrupt. In the '80s they poured money into a housing boom in this country which turned into negative equity, followed by the LTCM crash and a foray into Russia which also turned sour. Each time this happened, they recovered by carrying on milking the good old British consumer via their current accounts. Business as usual.

This time around, the banking regulatory system had been changed by our good friend Gordon "newbie" Brown; instead of the Bank of England doing the regulating – which it had done just fine for the previous 200 years – we had the totally useless FSA. Instead of putting a check on the banks greed, they simply got everyone to fill out endless pointless forms.

Don't blame the banks. Blame the numpty who changed the system for the sake of change, and made it worse. Oh, and the same numpty who had a "Golden Rule" about borrowing, that he then just rewrote when it looked like he might breach it.

If it ain't broke, fix it until it is. Nice one Gordon.

Use the CO2 to get it seated. Then let it out and put in normal air and sealant.

But crest rims might just work with a trackpump.

Ha, what is this, 2001? Perhaps next you'll be whining about how no-one needs 5 inches of travel, or maybe bitching about having to go 9-speed?

I like my single speed rigid bikes. But the Avid BB7s are much less faff than hydraulics.

V brakes are nasty though. All the mud collects around them in a great big wodge, and then you just grind inexorably to a halt and fall off into the gooey sticky sludgy mud, face first.

Well, I'm not an expert at this, but I've done several tyres now without a compressor.

CO2 canisters are about £1 each, so you can inflate quite a lot of tyres before a decent compressor would be cheaper.

It also turns out that you can inflate Maxxis tyres on Stan's Arch rims with just a track pump, lots of soapy water and some frenetic pumping.

I haven't tried them, but don't Specialized claim that their 2bliss tyres (Captain, Eskar, etc) can be seated just with a track pump?

+1 @tron. Did it myself a few months back. Very easy.

On-One inbred.

I'd put up a picture of my very-nice-to-ride Singular Swift, but it's been posted here several times now, so I feel I ought to get a new one first.

Mmmm, gears. There's a whole world of debate just unpacking that one.

Thanks for the advice. Back from a nice fast morning bike ride I think I can now deal with this from a safe perspective.

I'd have thought most teenage boys know more about the internet (and associated technology) than their parents

Not in this instance. His dad is just too trusting. But he was caught out via the squid proxy logs!

That's almost the bit I find more scary – he *knows* that all the traffic goes through a squid proxy, because he has to configure the proxy settings in his browser. And they all know the proxy is there so that I can monitor what's going on!

Do I need to draw a picture, or what! Aeerrghghgh!

If you have a teenage son that isn't constantly ****, tbh you should probably take it back to the shop, there's something wrong with it.

That is certainly true.

Bit of a difference between what you can find on a 14 yr old's iPod these days and a tattered old copy of penthouse or something.

That is also true. I haven't been through the logs in detail (and I'm not going to) but we now have some pretty bizarre laws in this country. If he's accidentally downloaded a picture of some hairy bloke fornicating with an octopus then that is now *illegal* and I get to go to jail and be put on the sex offenders register! Crazy but true. (It's the octopus that's the problem, not the hair).

So:

– talking to; taking the pi55 sounds like a good idea
– set proxy to paranoid
– wipe PC and install netbsd – he can surf the internet again once he's figured out how to compile firefox from source.

…
…

And relax.

ziggy – thanks – I needed that 🙂

youpron or pronhub?

And the rest.

Is there an emoticon for "good grief" ?

I guess I need to switch the internet filtering setting from "casual" to "Fascist".

Chainring bolts make that noise!

What's wrong with a scaffold pipe extension?

I've got a great big length of old steel pipe (from a climbing frame) about 2m long.

Almost anything that's really stuck will come off with that and some GT85.

Obviously try to avoid bending other parts of the bike.