Memory map is very good, but maps can add significantly to cost. Great for sharing across different platforms etc. Wont run on macs though !

Motion X GPS / Lite Cheap and cheerful version. Free to download and cache maps. Downside difficult to pre-plan routes as restricted to using on phone / ipad (correct me if im wrong here).

Ditto above, its printer related.

Firstly make sure you have the most up to date drivers for the printer, then check the colour profile for the paper, some especially those that rely on clays / baryta with whitening agents don’t react well with certain ink sets esp under default settings.

Go to the paper manufactures site, instal the correct profile for your printer. It may resolve or it may simply be an incompatible mix in which case … try a different paper combo.

Got a set of R1X’s which are standard fayre on a few Lapierres, mix of the R1 lever and RX callipers.

Across the families three bikes we have a set of Formula K24’s, Avid Elixer CR’s and the Formulas R1X. All have Goodrich hoses so no unfair advantage.

In order of popularity

The R1’s have the most solid lever feel, very very little pull required. Have run with a 140 / 160 mix and been perfectly adequate on a 1×9, now on a heavier FSR so 160 / 160 combo. Downside the pads run very tight so can be a PITA to set up correctly. Bleeding very straight forward although its a tight fit with the Avid kit I have as the “knuckle” is tight against the lever body. Also the torque bolts are very VERY soft. Shortening kits are ridiculously expensive, hence the Goodrich hoses. Elegant design and Bling factor. Fit well with XT and LX changers. Warning they HATE avid rotors. Mine sang like a strangled cat until I swapped to formula rotors.

Next would be the avids, still solid enough but when you use them after the Formulas they do feel Spongier, but have less of an on / off approach. I tend to lock up less with them in a panic. So simple to set up, never had a drag issue with them. Weight penalty but never ever worried about them being damaged. Easy to adjust on the fly but to be honest … once any brake is set its a bit of a novelty from that point on. Bleeding can be a pain, lever needs to be bled separately to get best results. Few issues with fitting around LX shifters, but XT’s are fine. Defo the most comfortable lever of the three.

Third but only just is the K24’s Been dependable for 3 years now and kind of a mix of the best and worst of both brakes. Easy to set up, simple to bleed. Not the strongest brake and do get tired on longer rides if theres a lot of grabbing to be done. Easier to set up than the R1’s but beaten by the Avids.

Summarize, R1’s are very good, but I picked mine up new for £240’ish without rotors so that did make them more palatable. I’ve never ridden with the Avids and thought “the formulas are SOOOOO much better” so the price factor if an issue can help balance out the argument.

But then Im a whore for anodising, and figure if you’re going to buy something buy whats on top of the list for whatever reason else you’re always going to hanker after it until you do eventually cave in. And if it doesn’t live up to expectations at least you’ll lose little downgrading to option “B”.

Ditto RS.

I run the Xbox with TVersity and will play just about anything, no restrictions on file formats, source or licensing. Can watch Sky TV, rent movies, and play games on it …

I do have an Apple TV but purely for music, so I can wirelessly stream music through to a surround sound system, and was the smallest form factor available (and was cheap enough). Didn’t have any issues setting up a home share with a Win7 machine running Norton. The remote is pure Apple class. I am sure they will extend the system further, but given its restricted to 720p without a hardware upgrade it is behind the Xbox and other sling systems.

The cheaper option is a simple HDMI > Port converter for your macbook with the apple remote.

+ another one for TJ, the wife who certainly knows what she is doing always covers “mishaps” with tegaderm.

Its semi permeable so lets it breath and heal, but stops you abrading it (scaring) or leaking all over the sheets (and getting slapped by aforementioned wifey).

PS … and if you haven’t done so already, and the transaction was VAT’ed and you don’t run a cash book accounting scheme you can write off the bad debt with HMRC and reclaim any VAT paid to them as a result of the transaction.

To be honest (and from personal experience) its nigh on impossible to remove the veil of incorporation, which is the protection given to the directors by the limited company.

Even if the Director is blatantly fraudulent in his actions, if he is doing so through and for the benefit of the company, and not using the company to cover his personal fraud / gains, then he’s basically untouchable.

Its only if his actions contravene the Companies Act, or cross over into criminal activity as opposed to Civil that you’ve got any chance of instigating action and I doubt there would be any resultant payout to damaged parties.

So you ar much better off going for the company itself.

As above would defo pay to visit the Companies house website and purchase the financial reports submitted, they are only £1 and will give some insight into the financial position of the company when it was removed, potentially P&L’s and Balance sheets which will give a clearer picture of what there is to go after.

If the director applied to have it removed while it was still trading, and there was no insolvency. They can only file this application (called a DS01) if they have no outstanding legal proceedings, haven’t recently sold off any assets, and have not been trading for three months so the financial position shouldn’t be to much different to the companies house reports.

Given the current climate, if there was anything with some meat on it I’d assume most solicitors would be more than happy to take on this kind of work for a % fee.

You have six years to petition the return of the company, and once reinstated the company continues as if never struck off, and one of the applicable parties is anyone who has had a contractual relationship with the company or who had a potential legal claim against the company … which sounds like yourself.

Went through similar after a Ltd company went through a Pheonix restructure, we had just placed a substantial order with them which surprisingly wasn’t transferred to the company that “opened” the following week.

While it was substantially less than your loss, by simply commencing the process a payment eventuated miraculously from the ex-director. We were also benefitted by the fact he had retained the trading name of the previous company, so had not only lost the veil of incorporation for his “new” company, but also as was pointed out to him committing a criminal offence.

http://www.welovelapierre.com/productview.php?pickcat=10005939&pagetitle=Lapierre%20Down%20Tube%20Cable%20Guide%20Red%20

I’ve fitted the Alloy versions that come on the Lapierres.

welovelapierre have them for about £5 from memory, and they add a bit of bling as well.

Another vote for the Oakleys, I had refractive surgery close to 20 years ago now, and struggle with Glare and halos. Set of Oakley Jackets with a custom glare coating and small prescription make riding a lot more comfortable.

And as above, highly recommend Extreme Eyewear at Xscape. They were brilliant with the fitting and gave a loaner pair to see if the benefits warranted the cost (which they did)

You can apply to have any company reinstated by Companies House, and once done you can continue to chase the debt. Obviously he will then have to go through an insolvency if he’s going to try and avoid but no doubt you’ll be the only creditor so whatever assets were listed against the business will be sold by whatever IP is appointed, and you may get some dregs. Will also result in the accounts being looked at.

This can be done fairly easily through any solicitor.

There are certain circumstances that remove the protection afforded by a LTD company, mainly trading while insolvent, or using the trading name of a previous insolvent company (criminal offence). If he’s done either then the liability becomes his personally and is worth chasing.

As to the upfront fee, no chance. If they are that confident that they can achieve any result they should be willing to cover the cost.

Animoto … http://www.animoto.com

Hopes defo yes (18 months and still going), recently picked up a Cane Creek 110 for £40 from CRC after a link was posted here … been a month and hasn’t died … so its doing better than the POS Crank Brothers Cobalt that preceded it !!!!

Bitter much !

Bootcamp does have known issues for causing heat in MacBooks as it cannot access the required temp sensors. Workaround is to run the likes of Speedfan but is a lot noisier. This is a hardware / driver issue not related to Win7.

I actually find running parallels much much quicker than a straight Bootcamp setup.

regards performance of the later CS packages. My understanding is that Apple stiffed Adobe prior to the release of CS4, which prevented the utilisation of Multicores, or indeed 64 BIt on the Intel Macs as they were expected to utilise Carbon, but instead went with Cocoa.

Obviously two sides to every story but does mean that Win based machines do have a performance edge at present if built correctly.

hate hate HATE the apple magic mouse …

The scroll / movement is so frustratingly slow, and even with Better Touch running its still crud.

Stick with Logitech equivalents, and if you like the finger gestures invest in either a Bamboo of the Magic Pad.

Keyboards … again not quite there, the cordless don’t have a numerical section, and I find them to cramped to do anything serious on them, also they sit to “flat” to the desk to be comfortable for me.

Cordless can recommend the Logitech Mediapad series, or the full size USB Apple versions.

Its a shame they are so pretty …

try these as well …

http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/specialdeals/mac/imac/21?mco=MjEwNzM4MjE

Hence the recommendation of applying the IR35 test to the situation, and letting HMRC decide once and for all ….

The bad news is, if she is deemed to be an employee (which is determined by the applcation of the IR35 test … google it and answer the questions and will give you a yes / no answer) then you do have to pay her the statutory holiday entitlements (currently 27 days annually due, pro rata for part time employees).

The entitlement does include any Public holidays etc, and you can nominate what days employees must take as paid annual leave (so yes … you can make her work public holidays for no extra wage etc).

You cannot negotiate out of it, or pay them the cash equivalent and if you do attempt to do so you are opening yourself up to all sorts of bother if they get offside with you at any stage.

Even employees on short term contracts / acting under agent have the same entitlements if deemed to be an employee.

If she is deemed not to be an employee by IR35 then its purely a contract negotiation between you and her company (be it LTD or self employeed)

Bearing in mind that any calculation of salary should also include the holiday entitlement (ie annual cost / salary).

The one solace is that being employed for under a year there is very little recourse available to her through the Employment Tribunals.

Similar issue with 3 bikes, the wife and I have reasonable weight FSR’s and a light weight 1×9. Had a look at the floor / ceiling ideas and already had similar in an Ikea set up. Basically two telescopic poles that extend to the ceiling then clamps that go round with a variety of hooks etc. Think light weight scaffolding. Called Stolmen range from memory

Have it set so the light bike goes up high, wifes in the centre and mine at ground height, Taking off the front wheels means they can be stacked with handle bars not jutting into room. Two poles, hook for back wheel on one, two hooks on other for stem / handles.

Alo has a set of drawers that fit into the system which holds all the spares, tools and associated clutter.

A few of the FSA’s are 35mm as well …

Been there done that ! Crank brothers are CRAP … yes they are low (25mm) but my cobalt lastest less than a month. Strip down full of rust and gunk.

Other options tried were a Spank stem, only 50mm long but with a single bolt fixing has a stack height around 20mm. Unfortunately didn’t like the handling change.

In the end bit the bullet and ordered a new CSU from Petra cycles. while not cheap, was cheaper than replacing the forks. Bonus is now have a spare CSU if I go back to a smaller frame.

Funny, but I paid £60 to sky, on top of the subscription fee so fail to understand why I should have to pay again because they want to undercut their subbies, and given there is no option to not have it installed by their installation “engineers” as they have to verify the phone lines on a multiroom set up etc hence going to an independent doesn’t sound like great advice ?

And given that the instal was to add multiroom to an existing system, all that had to be done was to run the cable along the same path along the eaves to an adjacent room … 3 metres past the existing entry point and on the same second level with no additional bends.

There was a even an existing hole drilled through the masonry from where BT had fitted their phone line, with a one man team without any issue a week ago ready for the Sky.

And as it was 10am this morning I doubt it was 5th or 6th job of the day, and still doesn’t give a service person any excuse to trash someones carpet traipsing backwards and forwards through the house without due care.

Nor does it excuse someone smoking while they are working, and chucking their butts over our courtyard. And this was beyond slighty dirty … hence looking like he’d been dragged through a hedge.

Funnily enough our car mechanic doesn’t stick his greasy backside on the seats because I don’t provide him with a seat cover and as previously illustrated good service providers address the issue very easily by giving their subbies overshoes.

I guess I just have old school values, about taking pride in your appearance, reflects on how much pride you take in your work … which I guess is well illustrated by his charade of not being able to obtain a signal.

My money is on that whoever completes the job, has no issue installing the dish in the same location he couldn’t get a signal from / or running the cable from the existing location.

Hence my initial rant … about the service Sky Installation provide …

Boiler technician … British Gas Homecare plan, cant speak highly enough of their service staff we’ve seen to date. We had a recurring problem over winter where the boiler wouldn’t ignite in the mornings especially over the snowy period. The technician went so far as to come out at 7 in the morning so he could check it over when it wasn’t lighting rather than fixing it and doing a wait and see again.

Project.

facilities to wipe his boots on ? No … i took my shoes off in front of him as I came into the house, and short of hosing him down with a pressure washer and some bleach nothing would have improved the “satelite tv instalation technicians” state of cleanliness.

By comparison when we recently had our boiler serviced, the first thing the Boiler installation Technician did on entering the house was whip out his plastic boot covers, and put them over his workboots.

CK … Have you got their number ???

I can reach a foot above where the dish needed to go by standing on the foot wide concrete balustrade around the edge of the deck above the garage.

Apparently he needs a two person team to go that high.

Note … im not knocking ‘elth and safety here, just the cant be arsed attitude of this particular bloke, and his hopeless charade of not being able to get a signal !

Check out the pauls chain keeper, clean light and infinitely adjustable for chain line.

Have both the tube mount and BB mount versions on various setups. Picked them both up new from Ebay.

short or long cage length ? I went from a long to a short and solved a lot of my chain bounce / suck / drop issues.

Also erred on the side of short when setting chain length as well … 32 tooth front to big rear with one extra link.

well ours certainly knows to the minute when everyone is due home … and duly takes her place on the back of the sofa on window watch. I swear to god she must have swallowed a rolex at some point !

Not to mention meal times …

So i’d say pretty good, but then its also relative, if they are stressed then 10 minutes no doubt feels like three weeks, whereas a 10 minute run around feels like 2 minutes.

We “invested” in a labradoodle (cue the laughter) but absolutely brilliant breed. Being an A1 to a miniature poodle means she’s about beagle size, with the Labs temperament and love of water / running etc. Moults very little and low-allergenic.

Regards leaving at home, i’d say no longer than 3-4 hours max. When both me and the wife are working through the day she goes for a run in the morning, then we have either a dog walker come round at lunchtime to take her out, or our neighbours who work from home take her out with them (lately she has been adopted by them through the day as well … spoilt !). Neighbourhood kids can always be roped in for a few quid to take them out for a bit.

Im also lucky in that I can take her to work on quieter days.

They are a commitment though, holidays etc are always booked with the idea of bringing the dog (drives to France are now the norm). And they are not cheap !!!

Wouldn’t be without one though.

mrmo, you are right, the Sale of Goods act supersedes any Warranty … and lasts for the useful life of the product (taking durability into account) and is the Retailers responsibility. Warranties are handy if anything should happen to the retailer.

Unfortunately (and certainly not saying the case here) retailers tend to buck their responsibilities by relying on the manufactures warranty to repair / replace.

In my (albeit jaded) eyes, if retailers were held to task over this a little more product design may start to incorporate an element of durability beyond the current annual update cycle.

Personally i get fed up of headsets that last a month, pedals that collapse after 4 and frames that crack after XXXX.

Im pretty sure the intent of the reasonable time is to make retailers take responsibility for issues, and not to pass the buck back to the manufacture.

In an ideal world the retailer should put there hand up, grab whatever satisfies the client off the shelf, hand it over and then deal with their supplier behind the scenes (stress the ideal world … without clients who smash things up and expect them to last forever … which isn’t the case here). It is the RETAILERS decision to replace or repair, not the supplier.

That is after all why there is the option to replace with a similar product within the act, and what the retailer should be calculating a % of their mark up on (failure rates).

Having been on both ends of the situation many times I can certainly understand the frustration of a client, who has spent considerable amounts of their hard earned money only to be let down by poor quality and venting it at those that are there to take responsibility (the retailer).

And I’d me MASSIVELY disappointed if any retailer took it upon themselves to ignore their legal responsibilities by binning the complaint … which surely is not only going to make the situation worse for them, but also reflect negatively on the manufacture / product off which they earn their living.

Have worked fine for me (but then Im certainly no expert). The “official” kits are around the £40 if you can get hold of them. When I was replacing everyone was showing out of stock. From memory paid around £25 off ebay and as I say, 18 months and still going strong (light to moderate use).

Invest in a Goodrich kit if you can, they massively improved a set of Formula K24’s that I was contemplating upgrading. Huge difference in power and feel.

Was kind of forced into it after discovering the price of the formula shortening kit compered to the complete Goodrich kit.

Have since fitted them to all the bikes with similar results.

Wait a couple of months !!!!

Maybe you should be pointing out the sale of goods act to them …

… Retailer must repair or replace ‘within a reasonable time but without causing significant inconvenience’

I’d guestimate that not having a bike for a couple of months comes under the significant inconvenience bit …

Refurbed the wifes 07 Stumpjumper. Picked up a complete set off ebay and they’ve lasted 18 months so far without complaint. I have the 08 and its started getting a bit creaky over the past couple of weeks, still trying to decide if BB or bearings but for £30 a set may as well replace the bearings first.

My “technique” was simply a collection of appropriate sized sockets, a bench vice, and plenty of penetrating oil.

I’d recommend doing them every couple of years regardless, also means less chance of them being REALLY difficult to get out.

Would also push for Apple … final cut express will set you back £99 but a very worthwhile investment.

Have a look at the refurbished apple website

http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/specialdeals/mac/macbook_pro/13?mco=MjEwNzM4MTE

They often have several impressive priced items, all with one year warranty etc.

Failing that one of my colleagues recently picked up a Medion P series (I think model 6627), and while a bit “chunky” in appearance it certainly has some grunt under the hood for the price.

I still haven’t found much to compete with the Ay-ups. Invested in their adventure kit, so between the 4 supplied lights can create enough throw for any situation. Having both a helmet and bar set included makes them very versatile.

Other thing I like about them is they are less confined to the bike, brilliant for camping etc.

Others I ride with have had the Hopes, and exposure stick combos and while no doubt as bright they seem to provide a very “tight” light source which I personally just don’t get on with.

The exposure sticks are a brilliant bit of engineering though …

Also invested in one of these

http://www.tredz.co.uk/.Sixsixone%20661-Sub-Gear-Body-Armour_40906.htm

Like wrestling a horny octopus to get on and off but does help support and protect, there’s a similar more expensive range (body armor I think) but haven’t seen in the flesh.

Did mine last year, went for both laser and pulse (both in same session) Fitted with figure 8 brace. I arrived wearing a similar neoprene brace and he went berko at me. It does nothing to hold the bones in alignment during the osteoblast phase, in fact more chance of bad alignment / dropped shoulder.

Figure 8 is out of favour with nhs as it costs more than the triangle bandage, and its about the most uncomfortable thing on the planet to wear so the average jo wont wear it.

If ur going surgery then ask for the dual-trak screw not plates.

I was off bike for six weeks, did get on indoor trainer after 3 to keep fitness but rode with arm strapped against side and sat upright. And start doing the motion range excersise as soon as u can (finger walks up wall etc).

Other thing to start using is comfrey cream… age old remedy for broken bones.

Another vote for going slightly off shore, we have been to the Electric Picnic the last 3 years, and without doubt one of the more relaxed and accessible festivals. Biggest appeal being the range of quality food on offer 🙂

Great setup for campervans as well, we rent locally then roadtrip over which adds to the event and you can always throw some bodies in nearby tents if you want to keep cost down.