Fisha

I hear what you’re saying about flat subjects, something a lot of landscape views can suffer with.

I went seriously overboard with the split toning and vignetting options to get something from the original of this
.

Gas mark 4 vignetting won’t look very good on a large print but you’ve confirmed what I did with the monochrome versions, the sky needs a lot more punch. 🙂

Yeah we’re 5hit at handling snow, mainly down to the fact that we don’t get any with any regularity.

Where we ski in the States has unsurprisingly got things down to a fine art. The local gardening and builder type firms stick blades on the front of their pickups and plough peoples drives, car parks and so on. The main roads are ploughed and gritted clear within a couple of hours of snow, so much so that we’ve driven to hills in the morning in 6 inches of snow to find the roads DRY come the end of the day.

Of course this is totally down to the fact that they regularly get the weather and have the kit to deal with it.

Two years ago when we were there, the southern states (the Carolinas, Georgia etc) got hit by freak snow and it was utter chaos for them. The northerners were p!ssing themselves laughing at the news reports.

Oh and one other factor that burggers us up is the humidity of our weather. If you look at our typical dew point it’s way above freezing so when the temps drop we end up with a lovely frozen coating of ice, as witnessed when you have to defrost your car in winter.

A lot of places elsewhere have much dryer air and frost coatings are unusual for them.

It’s been snowing? 👿 😉

As per previous winters I have my winter kit in the boot of the car:

Snow chains 😉

Cordless Recip saw (we get plenty of downed branches round here)

Shovel

Plus various blankets and plastic sheeting that live in the boot for bike transporting.

This all really does look like an axe murderers kit so fingers crossed I never get stopped by the plod 😆

f all in Mid Sussex

When I first started cycling ‘properly’ back in the late 80’s I learnt the hard way about not covering your kidneys and lower back in cold weather.

Bib shorts/knicks/tights ever since

I find hoof prints just bounce you everywhere, tractor ruts shake me to bits.

[open can of worms] 😉

According to some, did you know that MTBers are apparently to blame for worn paths in this fair land?

Can’t say I’ve ever had issues riding bike tracks, unlike negotiating horse and cattle hoof prints.

[/close can of worms]

Passed a MTBer yesterday (-4′) wearing clown shorts baggies.

Either he was nails, or didn’t know he could get leg coverings.

My knees get really grumpy in the cold so bib knicks and/or legs as required.

Been there three time over the years, the last back in 2010.

Geographically it’s fantastically diverse for such a small area. You have the mountains in the middle which are UK type temps and then an hour down the road you’re back in to either ‘jungle’ or ‘savannah’.

As per all Asian driving, the roads are err, interesting. A typical road will often consist of people and bikes near the kerb, tuk tuks and similar sized vehicles overtaking them, buses overtaking the tuk tuks and cars overtaking the buses. Repeat the same pattern on the other side of the (two lane) road.

I took my Garmin with me and the drive from Columbo to Kandy at 10am took 4 hours for the 74 miles. Going back from Habarana to Negombo was 100 miles and took 4:20.

Sigiyra is a must visit but if at all possible, try to go there privately so that you can get taken to the sister rock, Pidurangala. The ascent of Sigiyra is positively wheel chair friendly compared to the trip to the top of Pidurangala.

Here’s a selection of snaps I put together for some friends http://www.mikeanton.com/SriLanka2010highlights/index.htm and some more on Panoramio.

First Game of Thrones in bestest dead tree format.

Prior to that Ben Aaronovitch’s Moon over Soho and Whispers Under Ground.

Nice one Footflaps 😆

I’d love to do this for some emails

And staying on the multi lingual line,Yob Tvoyu Mat would be very tempting.

Completely concur with everything TT has said. 8)

Only thing to add re the check pictures is set the aperture to f16 or smaller and defocus the lens. – You’re taking an image of the sensor, not the blurred background.

IIRC during the 19th and early 20th centuries, after English speakers (English, Scots and Irish) the next highest proportion of immigrants to the USA were German.

tinybits
But will still kill your ‘DIY standard’ drill / circular saw.

Rent something big and bloody powerful. You’ll thank me in the end

(Have just had 2 ton of French oak delivered….)

I only had 500KG of sleepers last year but made up for that with 6 tonnes of gabbion stone that had to be hand barrowed 80m 🙁

RegP

Modern sleepers will be much easier to work with and IIRC about 35 – 50KG each for the smaller ones.

Do you know any body builders / strong men[/url], as it’d be useful exercise for one of them!

Good luck with cutting them, especially the old Lignum Vitae ones.

If you’re drilling and cutting, think heavy duty drills and chainsaws, unless you’re a masochist and like manual labour.

Modern ‘sleepers’ are generally specially cut lumps of French Oak and a darn sight easier to handle.

grum
How ya mean you’ve taken 3000 ‘full frame’ shots on that total?

Sorry, by that I mean shots that you pay the price premium of a full frame body for; landscapes, etc.

Despite having had a 7D for nearly three years, I still don’t like the IQ and the AF can be err variable. The 5D3 is massive overkill for running, cycling and triathlon events but IMO the IQ and so far, accuracy, is far superior to the ‘sports’ 7D.

Looking at it another way I didn’t think the 5D2 was sufficient upgrade from the 5D to warrant the expense. Pretty much all of the photos I’ve got on Panoramio were taken with my 5D.

Can’t wait to take some proper shots with my 5D3.

Oh and plus 1 to Vorlich’s 2ndhand retailer recommendations

As someone who owns multple Canon bodies, I would strongly urge you to go straight to the 5D3 if you’re set on full frame.

I obviously can’t ignore the price differential bit the AF is excellent and the low noise capabilities pliss all over just about anything else.

It’s what the 5D2 should have been, 7D features with decent AF, in a full frame body.

The day after I got mine, I rattled off 8000+ frames shooting a marathon and have probably done about 50000 frames now. I guess I’ve taken about 3000 ‘full frame’ shots in that total.

If the body got announced last month you’d still be waiting until Feb at the earliest before any started shipping.

Without knowing what you want to shoot, what kit you have and what budget, I would say a 5D2 would pliss over any such alternatives, budget notwithstanding.

If you really really value the pics and want to keep them indefinitely, you need to save them in multiple locations.

If you store anything in the ‘cloud’ i.e Flickr, Picasa, Dropbox, you name it, be prepared to loose access to them at some point and/or have them scooped up in some copyright / ownership landgrab.

As you’ve only got 8GB, copy them to DVD, USB, hard disk and upload the better ones to your online storage provider of choice.

Cheers Stoner

I’ve already got that standpipe and trap, which is what I was going to fit the v33wm to.

Won’t look as tidy but I guess I could get one of the traps and nozzle assemblies instead. Washing machine pipe fed in the top and tumble dryer attached to the nozzle? The trap and elbow would be dumped in the ‘spares’ cupboard

neal

Unfortunately no, the trap and waste pipe will need to go into a corner space which will mean one of the spigots will be useless.

I ideally need to bring it back away from the wall and facing back into the room, hence angling it.

It’s no deal breaker if I have to take it back though.

I played a similar game with them about 10 years ago when I had (according to them) been self employed.

God knows where they got this from but as fast as I contacted them the faster the threatening letters came and the fine amount went up.

I worked out that the place was/is largely staffed by minimum wage keyboard monkeys who can’t deviate from a script and pretty much don’t give a 5hit so don’t take it personally. I eventually found someone with the brain cells that week and we got it sorted.

Above accountant advice is sound but it may be worth persisting with them on the phone to find someone who might make the effort to help.

On a connected note, who knows that you’re obligated to tell the tax man when you change address?

johndoh
Have you seen what else Samsung make!….

True but then what DON’T Samsung make? 😆

For no good reason other than we were there, I poked about in the white goods section of a John Lewis last week and quite a few of the fridge freezers had smooth rolling drawer slides, which I thought was a nice design feature, and kept me amused for a minute or two :roll:.

I also quite liked the look of this Panny as well though obviously that’s not cheap.

Drac – Moderator

Buy the most expensive you can afford and then post on here asking if you’re ‘mad’.

You rang? 😉 😛

Liebherr are very well regarded if you have the pennies. – They tickle me for doing fridges at one end of the spectrum and then f off big dock cranes and mining equipment at t’other.

ourmaninthenorth
No doubt absolute purists do do such things but it’s the law of diminishing returns.

Years ago, when I frequented the Naim boards (when flirting with the idea of a full Naim set up), there were very serious threads* about people’s projects to have the whole of their mains supply upgraded to very precise specs.

A friend in Hi Fi retail went to the Naim factory a few years ago and finished hand assembling his CD5.
I have wondered if line interactive UPS’s would make an audible difference* but quite frankly CBA to rejig one of mine to to find out.

*= difference, but not necessarily an improvement

AKA ‘Ronsons’ 😐

somafunk – Member

If you’re bored and you feel the need to shout at your monitor > How much for a mains power cable?

Improving the quality of the electrical supply can enhance top end audio.

However we’re talking incremental gains and more importantly, you’d want to upgrade the whole electrical circuit path and supply, not just the final metre or so from the wall.

No doubt absolute purists do do such things but it’s the law of diminishing returns.

Periodically unplugging and cleaning RCA jacks can make a difference to the sound. I did notice a subtle change when I last did this as an experiment but that was something like 15 years ago. – As you can probably tell, I’m really not that fussed about such things.

Cougar

I’m in love with Pepper Potts

In a film containing Cobie Smulders? Madness.

Wot he said

The guys at CAD[/url] have always been very good for help and products.

Have a look at my recent toy purchase thread, as it’s vaguely connected to the topic at hand.

Reading articles on such sites as UKwhitegoods[/url] indicate that there’s definitely a shift towards ‘value’ when it comes to equipment longevity and comments like ‘my parents are still using a machine they brought when I was a kid’, we’re still using a machine from the 80/90’s bear this out in my mind.

We had the heating element go in our oven before Christmas, almost 10 years to the day it was brought. There’s no reason to suppose that we won’t get another 5 or more years out of that.

I guess I’m fortunate in that I can afford to spunk a silly amount of money on the above dishwasher but I’ve always taken the view of buying the best you can afford so that it a) lasts and b) is nice to use.

v8ninety

Agreed, why would a man voluntarily give up a double garage??? I’d kill for a double garage!

This + 1,000,000

Wait, I’ve found something even more expensive

V-ZUG Adora SL anyone? 😯

Obviously I have no point of reference atm but numerous people and t’interweb have said dishwashers are much more water efficient than hand washing.

We’re now on a water meter and whilst this wasn’t much of a factor in this toy purchase, I’m curious if anyone has any experience on water savings?

That’s definitely an age thing[/url]. In the past year I’ve found myself regularly looking over the tops of my glasses for close up work.

I don’t wear lenses so can just either carrying on peering over, or just take the glasses off.

Welcome to middle age 😆

Sniff did an amusing though actually quite accurate article last month[/url]

Should the temps drop sufficiently to freeze the slop then I might consider swapping to the MTB for the cross country commute. No showers and clothes drying facilities at work make getting covered in mud on the way in an impractical option.

Last time I drove in the snow was in the States where we had a 3 hour night time drive in a snow storm. Absolutely no problems driving in a boggo standard hire car. Wider roads and more familiarity with the conditions obviously help the locals.

somafunk

No not at all – we are most grateful to hear of your recent acquisition , the great and knowledgeable of stw bestow upon you their combined admiration and felicitation for such a purchase and bequeath upon you honour and acceptance into the stw fold, you brought “ISE” to the masses with a sly proclamation of the exorbitant costs involved and accompanying manufactural ethical mission statement.

Congratulations…. You have achieved acceptance to level 1 stw @nk

Lol 😆 (we definitely need a thumbs up smiley BTW)

Yes that’s a sh!t load of money, but hey, it’s mine to waste so hey ho.

But I’m glad I’ve created a topic of some interest and amusement to others :-), though two pages of replies on a Friday night is very very sad is it not :wink:?

Last year’s three bikes were:

700c CF TT frame, so doesn’t count
26″ CF hard tail
26″ Alu F/S

If this new (and your 2nd bike) is going to be used for a variety of road related pedalling, I’d personally lean towards a light tourer / audax / cross based bike. They typically have a longer wheel base and are a bit more comfy, as well as the necessary bosses for load lugging / mud guards.

This would offer more scope than a flat out Sunday best CF cafe racer and would likely get used on a much more regular basis.

I see Thorn have already been mentioned and if you were feeling flush, you wouldn’t be disappointed with a Ti frame, such as an Enigma Etape.

Don’t know the area at all but a compact c set and large range cassette should see you up just about everything.

matt outandabout

Nice 8)

drlex

I saw some F&P a few years ago and thought they looked very nice. I’ve since learnt they’re err, not that reliable.

Oh and we’ve been a Miele household since 97. – A change is as good as a rest and all that.

All joking apart I do like the sound of ISE’s philosophy but hope never have to check their after sales support.

banks

I won’t mention that to Missus A 😆

allthepies

for sure a cheaper one would probably do just a good a job and potentially not go t!ts up but hey I like shiny toys.

Cinnamon girl

Why not? Last year I reckon I spent about £6K on bike stuff and in the scheme of things, that’s not very financially astute if you consider cost versus actual usage.

Ironic that we live in a small house and drive a 8 year old car. You’d normally put this sort of behaviour down to a Audi driver in middle England 😉 😈

Northwind

We already have a car