If one buff’s not enough, wear two! Round the neck and pulled up like a balaclava.
When your head gets too hot, just pull from the back while riding along, and it reverts to only a neckwarmer.

Try the “green building forum”
http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/
Usually some good advice there on stuff like that

Try this then.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/nigel-farage-european-parliament-euro-game-just-who-hell-do-you-think-you-are-you-are-very-d

I liked the idea of the lobster, I just can’t get on with using two fingers on the brakes. Two just won’t go comfortably, and remaining two can’t hold the bar properly.

I almost gave up till I found these last night for single finger braking. (Tredz). -Perhaps now I’ll get 1 cold finger not 4 😕 Ordered a pair.

They measure as the crow flies from the door of the school to your front door. Outside the area (which might be very small if the school mostly collects the lion’s share of it’s input from another feeder school), you stand very little chance if a school is over subscribed.

Siblings of kids already there and special needs get priority regardless of where they live.

The government forces councils to hold a kangaroo court which is called “appeal”. For popular schools, it’s pointless and rather demoralizing, – but they are not allowed to tell you that. I’ve done it. All parents have a right to appeal though, whatever the (more or less pre-determined) outcome.

Hi Harry.

Is that a plug-in one? I bought one a couple of years ago from B&Q and was disappointed that it would only measure down to about 5 watts. Anything less and it said zero. No point looking at all the little transformers and stuff because it wouldn’t record. I took it back and told them it was unfit for it’s use.

I did then borrow a very good one (from the library!). It’s intersting to compare how inefficient the cheapo (eg Ikea) lamps can be compared to better brands.

Must buy a good one.

Stir fry’em for a couple of minutes.
Cut in half. Ginger, garlic, sugar, splash of water and some nice tamari. If you live near the sea throw in a handful of dulse (That’s the red flimsy seaweed). Yum.

It’s so barmy I must try it. I’m very doubtful, but I lost fingers this morning. Ouch.

And Jim, I’ll disagree very strongly with “Keep your core warm”. My core is often so warm that I’m sweating wanting to strip off layers, only my fingers are too cold to undo the zips.

Veg 30 years now. Something wrong in your opinion Pop.
Funny thing, the older we get, the more decrepid one’s meat-eating friends become. Still, it’s your choice..

Be ready for “So why do you want to work for.. XYZ?”

Look at them, don’t shuffle or cover up your mouth.

More importantly, try to get your interviewers talking about their own stuff! If they are not particularly experienced at interviews, (pleased to be asked), they will happily do so without noticing you have pulled it round backwards, and will leave feeling happy. (ie – you are a good candidate!).

MSM, Glucosamine.
Zinc, Flax oil.
Lutein, Bilberry extract (for the eyes, seems to be good)
Occasionally pop a B12.

Placebos work very well – for the right kind of people.

Billions of people also beleive in God, Allah and the power of homepathic water. They tell us it benefits them, so why not Powerbands?

Sadly you really need mis-directed belief to pedal anything like this (snake oil, religion etc). That would rule me out on nearly every level, otherwise it’s a nice little earner.

Attitudes take a generation or two to change. NZ (and Oz) is stuck in the 1970’s in many other cutural ways it seems.

Peak oil, the impending and inevitable world energy crisis, and big hikes in road fuel prices (oh yes, we’ve seen nothing yet..) will hopefully help to temper the attitudes over there (and elswhere) within a few years.

Broad beans. I can’t get enough of them.

We have a 12″ one from 1985. It did used to work if Mrs Mc clouted it properly on the sweet spot. – Nowadays our Virgin cable is broken for TV signal anyway, so we don’t (ie can’t) watch it.

Iplayer gets used from time to time. – My 8 yr daughter mostly likes the nature programmes.

If you are prepared to be just a little geeky, it’s well worth looking at a serious review site like http://www.steves-digicams.com/ first. I have bought both my cameras (Canon) based on that one site, and can honestly say it’s not hard to hit above average photo quality for the price you want to pay, – provided you take care.

Likewise I’ve personally compared the output from many other folk’s garden-variety cameras which they chose because they sounded nice, were suitably shiny, or had jumped-up but rather pointles “MP” or “Zoom” statistics. – I’ve always been very pleased with my choice, informed by the above.

I find Shimano sizing is spot on.

I think this is a good topic. Like Bigsurfer we don’t really heat our house much. I took out the boiler 2 years ago, and we still don’t have one at all. We do have a 4KW woodstove and that’s it (a four bedroom house). It’s OK, and we warm up at the stove. It’s very cheap though (more or less zero using “roadkill” wood), but the rest of the house can get chilly.

Ventilation is hard to get exactly right in a cold house. It’s easy to recommend if you are burning loads of gas, but when you aren’t, there is a fine line between “cold” (with ventilation and condensation) and “bloody freezing” (with more ventilation and yet still getting condensation). Cold internal air just can’t hold the moisture, so it has to drop out somewhere.

What is the payback comparison for dryer air (still cold but feeling warmer as a result), versus burning the same energy as straight (but still not dry) heating?

My builders wouldn’t touch wooden frames! I thought that was telling.

Fitted them all myself and I’m very pleased I did.

Wood is better than UPVC. It will outlast it, and is a renewable resource. Do think about it.

The “benefits” of UPVC are a lovely myth created by an industry which makes more money because they are easier to produce and can be fitted by oiks.

Aluminium won’t be as efficient as either though, but will outlast UPVC. Alloy frames will have some sort of thermal break, but that’s rarely as good as the bulk insulation of wood or UPVC, so there is a limit to how efficient they can be.

Borax is on of the safest things to use. Not sure how effective or whether you can get it inside the wood very well though.

The other stuff on the market is safer than it was not so long ago, but I’d look up the COSHH data if I were you. (- People really have suffered chronic illness and even died during the mid 1980’s by dousing their houses with pentachlorphenol which amazingly used to be legal till fairly recently)

If the furniture breaks down I’d try cooking it. It won’t go in your oven but building an “oven” with some sheets of plywood and some cheapo B&Q insulation on the outside. Couple of fan heaters and a thermometer. It’ll soon be over 80C inside. Not quite sure how long or hot you need to kill the critters stone dead but it really isn’t very much. You’ll find advice on Google. The National Trust do this for whole beams in situ to avoid chemicals.

Mine have had police out twice after me. (Once for flying a toy aeroplane, and once more for subsequently telling him to bugger off).

Nice to know your taxes get well used eh?

I’ve had some spokes a little cut up at the base when a chain once went over badly and jammed. It didn’t affect the bike immediately but may have contributed to some later spoke breakages. I guess it protects from that if you have a crummy set-up.

IMO use no salt at all. Concentrate instead on the quality of your flour. English, fresh, and organic.

White flour added in might make it more like shop bread, but dilutes any flavour. Nice for a change but it soon gets dull.

If you must fill it with salt it doesn’t really matter what crummy ingredients you use though, it will kill you early, and taste horrible anyway.

Loads of good suggestions here. And will people stop knocking weather forecasters? I’m stunned by how accurate the weather charts are, even down to timing of fronts which might still be three days away and not even formed yet.

Problem for forecaster is that media and public dowesn’t let then say the truth half the time. If they are expecting a beautiful spring post cold frontal day with possibluy a shower they are forces to report “cold in the wind” and “rain” for fear of upsetting someone.

That’s why you should do your own with the links given here.

We used to do lots of it when our girl was little. They are very portable at that age so no problem. She just slept much of the time on front pack. Mrs Mc even mastered breast feeding whilst walking!

Very strong November winds may not be so nice, but wrap a big cag/windproof and it goes round the lot. Toasty.

I could think of nothing else as I rode home and I’ll concede the error in mty previous theories of wind gradient. (Dynamic soaring remains lots of fun..).

The Thin Air explanation seems to have it.
Doing away with calculus because I’ll confuse myself, a non-rigorous power explanation at least satisfies me.
Say the car is already moving at the windspeed V so there is zero relative windspeed. A force f at speed V extracted from the wheels as a propeller drive would tend to slow the vehicle and provide extracted power fV. In order to maintain the vehicle speed and ideally make it go faster, a larger force F must be applied by the prop. This power The prop applies it’s available power relative to the local airspeed (currently zero). So it’s easy for extracted power fV to apply a large push force F against the (already moving) air because v is small, and locally tending to~0.

So F>f and so overall the vehicle will accelerate beyond windspeed until they are equal.

QED? well it satisfies me anyhow.

The model initially accelerates because of prasictc drag from the superstructure.
The main point is that in a linear wind there is simply no energy input to make it move faster than the wind. It’s a perpetual motion machine UNLESS you have another energy source. So what is that if it’s not the wind gradient?

If this thing can work by any other means, then if you put it on a moving converyor belt, it would drive off the front on it’s own. THAT won’t happen.

There. I had to get a conveyor belt in somehow.

Just put a sail on the bike! (BTW I did once and it worked OK. Quite exciting till I ended up in a ditch).

And a vertical axis mill would never allow you to go faster than the wind whilst downwind according to my concept of mixing the vertical wind gradient – Which is the main point being made here.

Agreed aracer, hence you need another energy source!

With linear wind, once the craft reaches windspeed, it’s effectively dead calm. There is simply no where for any energy to come from to accelerate it further – unless you accept that parts of the craft are experiencing differing windspeeds, ie wind gradient. But do look up “dynamic soaring”. The propeller on this craft must effectively use “Captive dynamic soaring” (I just inventend that term). -Watch my vid and explain how that model flies in circles!

Once the craft is going faster than the wind, then I believe it CAN be driven, and losses made up by using the wind gradient.

On the other point, I read the sailing comments link, and I’ll certainly believe that a boat sailing broad reaches could get downwind faster than the same boat sailing directly downwind. But but I’m still not yet convinced it could do it faster than the windspeed.

No I didn’t read the comments. Thing is this actual vehicle is having it’s blades driven by the wheels. There MUST be another source of energy input. Otherwise, when it reaches windspeed, this becomes a perpetual motion machine.

The corollary would be an aircraft which flies forever with one propeller (windmill) driving another (tractor), but in this case the “mill” is the wheels on the ground. Both clearly impossible, so it must be getting it’s extra energy from the wind gradient.

@molgrips “You can tack downwind and arrive at your destination faster than the hypothetical balloon drifting in the wind”
.. Can you really? – even when the destination is directly downwind of the starting point?

I was not sure on that one, so I didn’t suggest it!

Do you still call this “boundary layer” on the big scale? I guess so.

I mean that the wind at 1m above the ground is less than the wind at 5m above the ground. – There is energy to be gained by mixing these two airmasses. (In this case with the propeller).

@charlieMungus. Air is viscous, and friction will always mean the bits of air at ground level won’t be moving at all, whilst high up you have the greatest windspeed. Naturally in between the wind varies with height. It does this most over the first few metres.
Sea birds such as the Albatross and to a lesser extent even seagulls use this wind gradient all the time to soar the turbulence.

here is a video (happens to be me) flying a model aircraft on the lee-side) (ie the back) of a hill. All the air is going downwards and the model has no engine. – yet it’s quite possible to fly the model indefinitely in circles. This model happens to be quite inefficient, it’s not very good and is loosing energy all the time. So where has this come from? it’s come from causing mixing of the two horizontally moving airmasses.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCYBU7-Bszw.
If you imagine the model is in fact the rotating blades of the air-car thing, then those blades will be driven round and can extract energy from the CHANGE in the windspeed – not the actual windspeed per se.

@funkynick.

My thought is this: Consider the craft equalling the windspeed measured (for example) at the altitude of the prop hub. The top of the blade arc will still be in a small tailwind, whilst the bottom will be experiencing a small headwind. (There is no wind at zero altitude because of friction, and there will be something in between at the bottom of the arc).
So with the vehicle at “windspeed” (at the arc centre), the bottom of the arc is in a headwind and the blade down there will be driven by the forward movement of the vehicle, the top is still experiencing enough tailwind for the blade there to be able to drive the car a little faster than the wind speed.

So energy is gained from the wind gradient and the rotating “sail” effectively mixes the slow moving air near the surface with the faster moving air up high. This mixing increases entropy (ie mixing of the wind gradient) and thus extracts the energy from the wind gradient itself.

Similar principles allow an non-powered aircaft (ie a glider) to remain airborne indefinitely by flying repeatedly across a wind gradient boundary. This is easy to prove and fun to do if you are a model aircraft flyer.

I think this might allow it to propel itself very slightly faster then the wind.

It’s the only way I can think it could ever work.

A bloke where I used to work in 1988 had 6 weeks signed off work for an ingrowing toenail. Yes really.

– I guess we can see why GEC went downhill!

Actually, thinking further. By utilizing the wind gradient, something like this might just be possible. The wind at the top of the blade arc is faster than the wind at the bottom because of it’s friction with the ground. I haven’t got my head fully round the implications in this example, but I am sure there are some useful ones!

If there are other model flyers out there who have done any “dynamic soaring” in a wind gradient you will know what I mean.

That video has to be a fake.

Anything travelling downwind without gusts, cannot go faster then the wind is blowing.

Crosswind is an entirely different matter, and the speed depends on the overall lift/drag ratio of the machine.

That video must be a fake. The prop is acting as a propellor (look at the blade angles), so could only be driven round if geared to the wheels of the machine which itself is getting blown slowly downwind because of it’s parasitic drag.

Sounds like a hopeless case to me, and then to keep on accelerating even further after the apparent wind reverses is impossible.

My father installed plastic central heating in his house built 27 years ago. This was the very first Hep2O stuff which was fairly radical in those days. It has been 100% reliable and is still going fine. These days the fittigs are improved and the pipe is better with a gas barrier. I have no probllems with it and use it in preference to copper. I don’t ever make fittings completely inaccessible though, which isn’t so hard since you can thread the pipe round corners and through gaps pretty easily.

One thing to not do: Don’t fit plastic push-on to copper! It fits nicely ansd will work for a few years. Green copper oxide builds up in the anerobic area beneath the o ring and will cause leakage after a few years. I found this out myself, so nowadays always use compression when converting copper to plastic.

I hope he’s succesful. Doing all that for the price is pretty impressive, and for many unfit people 190W is a LOT of power. It will almost certainly have less drag than one of us on a MTB, so should be able to make a good speed on the flat.

Anyway, it won’t be long before after-market kits arrive to have these whizzing about illegally at 30MPH.