Ha yes – may have been :)

Resolutes here at about 38psi, topped up with the freebie Orange sealant the night before ;)

Brilliant day – cracking weather to be out in the hills, great atmosphere and banter with riders, somewhat broken now though :)

Had signed up for the 200 but lack of time on the bike (longest training ride was 90k…) had me pretty much resigned to doing the 130. Got to the split, felt ok so did the 200…that last 20k around the lake was a complete killer! 11.5 hours, very happy with that given the circumstances, something to aim for next year!

Also getting the fear big time!

Been fighting the man flu that’s wiped out half my team at work, completely naff timing. At least the legs have been well rested ;)

Not sure I’m believing the forecast, just seems ‘too’ good…wondering if another bottle cage would be a good idea!

The one I’ve had the most fun on by miles:

Though this arrived last week, is gert lush, can see it being the favourite for a good while :)

Got one for a (leased) A4 Avant two years ago, it and the carpet underneath is like new (after dog/bike/camping mud/etc). Reduces the lease-damage-worrying a bit.

One thing I’d do differently if I got another – the extended seat coverage option (not sure what it’s called on their site) would be good, otherwise you end up with half the seat backs exposed with seats down.

Spendy, but ours has been bombproof. Will be going into the next lease in a few months.

Haven’t read the whole of the update thread so may have already been covered (apologies if so), but sticking a CDN in front of the site will help massively for very little effort.

Page content when logged in is already sent with no-cache response headers, so should continue to work fine. Anon users would benefit from a short TTL on page content, and offloading static content with a long TTL would help reduce load on the single nginx box that appears to be running the site.

Given STW’s a global site, a CDN should really be a no-brainer. If performance in the UK is bad, hate to think what it’s like in the US/APAC.

(I’d hope that since it’s all WordPress/bbpress, the basics of server-side caching have already been done: https://codex.bbpress.org/getting-started/improving-performance/)

Another +1 for McGhies

Have been running a 2.6 Nobby Nic on the back of a Rooster (with a 30mm rim), I’ve been pleasantly surprised. Relatively cheap on next day tyres too (definitely compared to the Minion on the front…).

About to rebuild onto a mk2 Stooge, fingers crossed it’ll still fit.

IIRC had to take both wheels off a large Rooster when it went in our Clubman. No pics but it definitely fit without too much faffage.

+1 for the Clubman. Marmite looks, but loved mine – still miss it. Had a large Five and a medium Cotic Soul wheels off + kit in regularly. Most of the time used bars/591s – like jimwah says, r53 roof bars are a pain to fit as there’s no rear mount points, r56/55 bars are a doddle.

Ace!!

We’re a few weeks ahead of you – jabs all done so finally get to go for walkies with Widget the ‘doodle on Tuesday. Been a long wait!

Brilliant fun – enjoy :)

We have the 1.4 150 in an A4 estate leasemobile, and it’s actually pretty good considering the size of the car. Concur with Ben on mpg – with roof bars/carriers it averages 43 on a long run, around town about 37. Lack of low down torque was odd at first but you get used to it, and feels pretty nippy once the turbo’s running, even when loaded. Not exactly sporty but not under powered either, very happy with it.

Re SIM cards etc – we rented a MiFi/wifi box with unlimited 3G from these people: https://www.econnectjapan.com

Was waiting at the reception of our first hotel, dropped it in the post (in their envelope) when we left. Makes Google Translate somewhat easier when deciphering menus/signs etc. Wifi so you can connect multiple phones/devices. ¥8000 for 12 days.

We spent 3 days in Kyoto on a shorter (12 day) trip this May. Would gladly have stayed longer, if that’s any help. Very well connected rail-wise if you were to use it as a base.

We stopped in Osaka for a couple of nights which in hindsight may have been better spent in Kyoto (did enjoy Osaka though, in a mental-busy gian-neon-signs kinda of way). Didn’t really have time to venture further south.

If you’ve time in Tokyo pop into Blue Lug at Kamiuma. Super friendly shop.

Would go back in a heartbeat.

<begins dreaming of cheesecake, ramen and Isetan food hall…>

Depending where you are in the country the DevOps thing is useful/interesting to get into. Plenty going on in the community side of things in London, lots of meetups frequented (or sponsored) by recruiters etc. Plus working with some of the more fun bits of AWS/Azure is nice if you like that sort of thing. I’ve moved into more of a dev mindset despite being from an infrastructure background (currently an infra tech architect at a web company), the lines are becoming ever more blurred with the amount of automation now involved.

Made the same move a year ago (though more Kemptown way), finally got out on a Thursday a few weeks back. Will be there this week making the most of the dryness (minty spitfire, too-wide-for-Stanmer bars, waves at chief!). See you there :)

Some good stuff over at Friston too, with a handy map

Enjoyed Star Wars and Star Trek, but saw Victoria on a whim and thought that was great.

Well, bit the bullet thanks to this thread. Ordered a medium Dune for Mrs MM…which may get pinched ‘occasionally’ – will be comedy small for me though. Still can’t make up my mind whether I really like the Rooster. If the Dune’s as fun as I hope, might sell the Rooster f&f and swap bits over to a large frame. Shame they don’t do a different colour option though, his+hers bikes…not sure…

Anyhow arrives tomorrow, can’t wait :)

Recent 10 day trip to San Fran / Yosemite / Monterey, booked a convertible Mustang through Thrifty – turned up at the pickup to be told it ‘had a fault’, but that they had an delivery miles SLK 300 and a free tank of fuel for the faff. Thankfully was just the two of us and minimal luggage…even so couldn’t drive with the top down and everything in the boot, which was sort of the point. Fine once we got to a hotel for a day or two though.

Think it was £230 for 7 days plus bit for fuel. Thrifty, despite the balls up, were pretty good to deal with.

Driving through a still snowy-in-places Yosemite valley with the top down will be etched in the noggin for a wee while. Have a good trip! :)

‘May’ have been perusing the Go Outdoors site, ‘possibly’ looking at Dunes – they’ve got a 10% offer on today, so with the member card + 7% from Quidco should give decent discount. If my maths are correct (they may not be), think it would come in at sub-£500…so very, very tempting…

Aye – 4 of us this year, in fun. Camping too. Done the last couple, great event :)

Mother Clucker fried chicken…dangerously close to the office

Made the same move as the OP 6 months ago, got an S3L in raw. Love it – easily saves 30 mins in waiting for buses/tubes at each end. Swapped the saddle for a charge spoon and the grips for some Ergon GP2s, which give a bit more flexibility in riding position (and make out-of-saddle sprints less sketchy). Stuck Marathons on from new which have been solid so far.

Agree about gearing though – went with standard ratio which never feels quite right. Might look at doing a -12 conversion, the climb up to Queens Park drags.

Stu @ Riders Cycle Centre’s just announced this year’s YD300…

http://riderscyclecentre.com/?page_id=2568

http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/yorkshiredales300-2016-tickets-20887916320

We host web stuff on internal VMWare and run some (~500 boxes) on AWS – both have their positives/negatives. From experience shoehorning ‘traditional’ apps onto a bunch of EC2 instances, deploying your own flavour of a DB server etc isn’t always going to give good results (to put it mildly). But when you begin decoupling things like MQ/object stores/search/mail and start leveraging managed services from the cloud provider, things make more sense. And if you’re able to build event driven workflows – the ‘loose coupled’ approach AWS like to push – things get interesting (and cheaper). AWS Lambda is pretty damn cool.

Costs are a headache, and for us has meant skilling people up with the knowledge to run/understand relevant reports + crack the whip as needed. Can definitely work out cheaper though – a GPU cluster running 24/7 in EC2 will likely cost more than on-prem, but if you only need it for 8 hours a week, it’ll cost less.

Anyhow OP – definitely good prospects. As said, get your head around Chef/Puppet/Ansible and maybe some monitoring stuff like logstash/kibana/splunk/new relic etc. From what we’ve seen more companies are making an attempt at DevOps, knowing the tools will set you in good stead.

@Stoner – not silly-cheap, but next day tyres have 29 Chronicles for £55 a pop…ended up getting a pair from them rather than alltricks (think they were a fiver cheaper).

http://nextdaytyres.co.uk/details.aspx/MAXXIS-CHRONICLE-MTB-29/1168

Interesting reading about problems seating on DL31s…grabbed a cheap pair from SS until I get something wider sorted out, will see how/if they go up OK at the weekend. Might finally get the Rooster finished… :)

Blimey they went quick! Got a few of us into sport instead.

Not a Scout, but have just had some Easton Arc 30s built up for my Spitfire. Had narrowed it down to these or the EX471s. So far have had a weekend of my un-finessed riding at Afan plus a few local outings, and I like a lot. Nice and wide, not too heavy, look good :)

Done

Hosting architect for a managed services dept of a big web design agency. Spend my time writing code to build/test/automate infrastructure at Amazon with a team of massively talented DevOps engineers for Renault/Nissan, which is full-on and fun. Dealing with ~200 Java developers scattered around the world and the bag of multi-million dollar spanners that is Adobe ‘Experience Manager’, less so. Enjoying being part of what feels like the cutting edge of the industry…

Won’t necessarily help track down suspicious behaviour on your machines, but you can get a bit of account history by logging into gmail and looking at the bottom of the screen for “Last account activity: xx hours ago”. Clicking details might show something out of the ordinary/worth reporting. Will also let you force end sessions that aren’t yours, if any still exist (though IIRC your password change should have done the same).

Just did ours (as part of a sale, so a bit more faffy that just an extension). Ended up being about £650ish which seemed about average for a 3 way share-of-freehold situation. Drop us a mail + I’ll send over a contact at the firm we used, they’ve been pretty good.

Definitely looking forward to it, despite the predicted soggyness tomorrow/Sunday! Can’t be any more slippy than the day/night practice…can it?? ;-)

Argh, wish I’d not read singletrackmind’s post, was nice and calm now proper pre-race nervy!!

Looking forward to it though, last year was ace (and dry…) – demo day on Sunday should be entertaining too.

In fun on minty green Spitfire.

If over that way, went to the Tramshed in Shoreditch for a similar thing a few months ago. Great if all 20 like chicken/steak. Not so great for veggies.

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Had a 2002 (R53) Cooper for a few years – great fun, brilliant to drive. Only mechanical problems we had (from 50-80k) were engine mounts and a hub bearing. That said I continuously worried that the gearbox would die – it was never had the smoothest shift and the early (up to 2004 facelift) models had Rover boxes…which if you read mini2.com seem to be made of cheese. 2004 onwards had the better Getrag boxes. Ditched the runflats as soon as I could which helped the ride no end.

Now have a Cooper S Clubman – quicker, more refined + more practical (you can actually have people sit in the back for a start). Still miss my old R53 though.

Had one since Dec, was a bit unsure about the fit – is tighter across the shoulders than would be perfect – but used to it now. Love it, right amount of warmth, layering it under a shell has worked well, been living in it this week. Have had a Filo for a couple of years for the colder days/Alps and it’s great, the Filoment will see more use I think (but then I get too warm at the best of times).

That purple Shand’s lovely.

Slightly metallic, smurf blue Five here – decidedly not skinny steel :-)

Looks like it’s full.

My entry’s showing “Entry on Waiting List”, no option to pay. Dilly-dallied too long methinks. Ar$e!

May be a good way off yet (based on the Puffin delivery timeline), but mine’ll be a Rooster…can’t wait :-)