I am going to take a hard look very soon at the feed in tarrif and the governments commitment. There will be lots of installers doing it, if it takes off, and China will pump out the panels to reduce the price.

At the mo my elec is from Ecotricity so I feel reasonable lack of guilt about it, but I will look hard at this stuff. Lots of people (eg navitron) sell DIY kits, so don't get too carried away by Government grants either. Most of these grants are more of a backhander to the installation company than a genuine benefit to you if you have some DIY ability.

Trekster: What's your opinion of panel price per KWp over the next few years: got any steers?

4 years ago I bought from CRC some 717's on XT hubs with DB spokes. I wasn't overly impressed. Both went ~3..5 mm wibbly within a few months of XC riding. At the time I blamed my choice of lightweight rims, but experience since has said the build was not as good as it could have been.

Perhaps they have improved more recently from what folks are saying.

It did go through my back wheel. Week before last. I had slowed right down to nothing to get through a pack of about ten of the little nutters. I was completely clear of them, and just stepping on the power at (guess) ~6~7MPH when one attacked me from behind. Back leg through the wheel, tail through the chain and round the sprocket (Hub gear, lucky my chain was already stretched!). Locked up the wheel but I was fine. We got it out after removing the wheel.

The nutty dog wasn't so happy, but it looked a little more subdued when I left it.

Put him through my rear wheel while I'm riding along. That cured the last one OK.

This "Homestart" nonsense. Let's get this right. Cold morning, car won't start. Call AA, they come and put the jumpers on. Car starts, drive away,

Car stops.

Car won't start.

I had the same with a leak in the front garden after my meter. The original builders had only thrown the black pipe into the soil with no protective gravel. A flint had gone through the pipe. I took a video of the spin rate on the water meter, and the rather exciting fountain (after i dug it out), then worked out from my bills how long it had been leaking and how much had gone (over about a month).

I got back 200-300 quid from the water company be sweet talking and providing my evidence

I wish we didn't have any at all.

I'll second the battery logic one. I have one. Not the cheapest, but dead geeky.
So many advantages being able to independently charge cells, work out which ones are bettter. And the power brick is a switcher so it runs cool (unlike most), and they sell a car adaptor. (FYO AAA's work just fine but you might need a bit of metal to lengthen the cell).

I think I'll give this a go. Thanks for the tips. I haven't done my flue since I put it in 2 years ago. Looks good value.

"your MPG is also probably greatly improved by being forced to stay at 56mph."

Very true. Over the weekend I was maxing out big time in a sort of personal contest, because I wasn't in a hurry (visit to the in-laws!). I could make only 76 MPG till I sat behind a few lorrries and it went up to 84. In the end I achieved a return trip of 273 miles on 16 Litres of diesel which is average 79MPG. The parts I was slipstreaming were clearly about 8MPG better than the parts when I was just cruising at 50-55MPH.

Builders safety specs. I picked up three pairs for £10 at a building show. Unbranded, lots of smart styles, same as sunglasses really, fit perfectly, ventilated. They do the job for me.

"Midwifery (and health visiting) always seemed, to me, to be a weird mix of old wives tales and up-to-the-minute science."

Ha ha. 🙂 We also had a laugh when the (hugely obese) health visitor at 4 months looked at her chart and advised us to feed our daughter more carbohydrates!

"cookoo :o) "
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327171.200-the-calorie-delusion-why-food-labels-are-wrong.html
Is basically what I mean

Lots of vegetables, beans, nuts, grains, raw stuff, no meat. Organic. It's much less how much you eat, it's got far more to do with what you eat.

Choose less processed food, and you pretty much CAN'T eat too much.

I think the only way is to catch'em young. I now routinely handle spiders (which I still dislike doing), just to teach my 6 year old daughter that it's all just fine.

She now lets them run about her arms, Perhaps one day she'll be whingeing about the boys!

Obviously you don't need to be told to stick with BM as much as possible and ideally 100%.

I can't speak for the 37 week issue which is posibly a strongly related issue, but it's commonly known that the body mass charts used in the UK are up the creek, and are dominated by unnatural records of fat kids boosted over the years by too much formula milk. Supposedly the charts are going to be revised downwards in light of more modern thinking, and the normal growth rate on BM.

That is one small snag. Roadies don't seem to care though. It's all about PERFORMANCE 😯

"Wouldn't you have to be really too close for comfort thou, you know in a car?"

Yes and no. To get the maximum out of it very definitely yes.

If you are sensitive to the car, you can feel the air pressure drawing the vehicle forwards from as much as 30 metres behind. 20 is much more obvious and rather more dodgy, any less would work brilliantly for anyone silly enough to take it further (not me). But at 50MPH in quiet dry conditions whilst the lorry itself has nothing in front of it, then I can personally sometimes take a risk at about 20M, and a MPG hound can still get a clear benefit.

All pedestrians are jaywalking retards who dash across in front of bikes, never look, never wait for the green man and kill dogs.

They should obviously all be banned, be fined by more police, made to take their walking proficiency test and take out walking licenses.

Traffic lights were designed to control 1 tonne lumps of metal, which by their nature demand rigidly defined safety procedures. That's why we have driving tests.

If were walking along a road, do you stop for red lights before passing on? No. So what if you were riding a scateboard or a scooter – what then?

I don't do it with complete impunity, and stop more often than not, but if it's safer to do so, or it compromises no one else, then I'll jump lights.

I see it no differently to walking across a road on a standing red man.

– I suppose Sanny, you always wait for the little green man before you cross the road?

Well I mangled a dog in my rear wheel just last week. It was trying to mangle me before I got it though..

Review of Nazca Fuego and Raptor Lowracer in this month's VeloVision. Want, Want. Problem is, I don't ride on roads.

Hmm. Need to live in the Netherlands a long way from the office.

Having messsed about over many years with various waxes and varnishes on all sorts of houses, my current philosophy would be do nothing at all- just leave them, best way in the long term.

Some TRV's are very poor quality. I made the mistake of fitting out my house 4 years ago with relatively cheap Italian made ones from Screwfix. The whole lot failed within 2 years, they stick open, they stick closed, just don't work at all now, and no amount of "freeing them up" by pressing the pin with fix them.

Morale: Use only well known big brand (ie not cheapo) TRV's next time!

That's a fine bunch. I approve of carrots!

"Big Pharma" Sorry Andy. That was indeed bad and very lazy. Perhaps I should read Daily Mail – then it would all be black and white.

Substitute " Wyeth, Novartis, Baxter Biosciences, Sanofi Pasteur MSD, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Sanofi Pasteur MSD, Aventis Pasteur MSD", Must be more but I ran out of ideas..

"but they want £1.50 for a PDF about MMR",

As I said Graham. You need to absorb what you see sense in, and not suck it in hook line and sinker. Personally I have no interest of belief in homeopathy, yet I am still prepared to filter out what good stuff can be found.

Clearly you are not the sort of person who would want to spend £15 a year to amass a mountain of references to research journals and papers, or to read, (perhaps to ignore is that suits you -it often suits me), articles contained therein. Your taxes to NHS already spends, without your say, vastly greater amounts peddling their side of the story. £15 subs for an individual's costs for pulling together a newsletter of alternative viewpoints and research otherwise blacklisted by Big Pharma, I feel is a small price to pay.

Re MMR: If you do want to see the real person responsible for the character assasination of Andrew Wakefield, give yourself 1 hour and watch this:
http://www.viddler.com/explore/ziggy/videos/1/

Hi Graham,
"Care to expand on why?".

Well I have concerns about the safety and efficacy numerous vaccines. This is not a suitable forum to expand on what (for me) represents many months of reading, looking at facts about disease, and the pros and cons of vaccination. This all began with choices for my child some years ago, and has left me fairly sure about my own opinion.

The whole area is beset with statistical fudgery and entrenched views from both sides. There is a massive multi-billion pound industry on the one side, versus the consumer on the other. I'm not here for a debate, but for an easy to start place for a parent could be http://www.informedparent.co.uk/.

No one is putting that junk into me or my family.

Problem with many of these is that they need the observer to be in a web connected PC, not a mobile phone.

Google latitude removes this issue, but isn't very good. It has frequently given HUGE position errors when I've used it. I think largely because it often selects cell tower position rather than GPS location, and gets it wrong. For instance I was in Cwmbraun and it told my wife I was in Bristol. Another time in Wales it told her I was on the Paris ring road! Problem is that whilst the server is reporting to your friends your WRONG position, it is reporting to you your correct position, so there is no way of knowing that it's up the creek.

I have tried Phonelocator with some success, and also Viewranger which worked OK (but it needs a subscription to their maps).

Nokia Sportstracker works OK if you want to observe with a PC, but there is no sensible option for tracking your friends from your phone, the web app is very heavy and crashes many phones. You also ned to switchnit on to start a record, rather than allowing it torun all the time.

Battery life will be somewhere between slightly reduced, to appalling, depending on how you set up any of these apps.

I'm going to try some of the others mentioned here now! – Thanks.

I believe you can still get white resin fillings on NHS (used to be the case long ago).

I wouldn't risk any amalgam if I was you. It's classified as hazardous waste when they remove it from cadavers. Do really want to suck on that for ..50 years?

Any cheapo ideas for the expensive wax+solvent approach of Rock-n-Roll? Solvent washes it down and wax sets inside.

I am thinking mixing together (say) Halfords chain wax with – er- some light solvent: white spirit, or diesel oil, or maybe even WD40.

I bought some Lidl shoes last year and thought better of it. Took them back.

Very heavy, crappy foam padding, very wide. I actually think Lidl stuff these day is over priced for the (often rubbish) quality

Ha Ha, I like that.

I'd also like to throw in "nocebo" which is the voodoo doll effect. It's the range of unpleaseant side effects brought on in people who are given a innoccuous substance who believe it to be toxic. (New Scientist a couple of months back).

These are the sort of people who might die of an overdose of Paracetemol, even if they were really only sugar pills.

Hi Beaker,

That is indeed impressive. How much of it was down to the public health campaign and increased awareness (which obviously would have accompanied the treatment), and how much down to the treatment itself? – How many took the treatment and continued to drink ugly contaminated water?
Perhaps we will never know.
Ultimately it doesn't matter, because it worked, which is the whole point.

Is this Kite surfing then?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzOCEDm73tM

Just last week on the sunny mornings:

Like lots of conventional medicine, homeopathy works on people who believe it does. Many modern conventional medicines, when tested in double blind trials against placebos have been proven to have no chemical effect on the ailment they are supposed to fix, yet they do still work, and continue to be prescribed.

So Homeopathy can work also, it's a very good placebo, and it's cheap. What's wrong with that? – It fixes some people without resorting to any sort of chemical medicine.

Personally it wouldn't have any effect on me, but then I try not to get ill!

Start where it doesn't show, If you are learning, don't try too hard for a finish till it's set up for a bit. For an old place on soft bricks, rubbing it down with an old cotton rag can give you a perfectly adequate finish. – Depends on the style of place.

Mix a suitable (fairly weak is often OK) mortar which suits the type of bricks. I rebuilt 2 chimneys on a old 18C house with (mostly) lime, but I threw in a sneaky spoonful or two of cement just to help it firm up.