Another thumbs up for Houghton/Whiteways, also lots of trails on the Downs north of Angmering/Crossbush/Worthing.
There’s a road ride group who meet on Tuesday night in Worhing and I’m sure they will tear your legs off make you feel welcome oo

Or you can go to the pump track in Angmering and show off your skillz in front of the local yoot 😉

And while we are all casting, might I nominate Terry Gilliam to Direct…

I’d always thought Eric Idle would make a perfect Rincewind.

Good call whoever said Andy Serkis for the Librarian.

Ian Richardson for Death, obviously ( or perhaps Christopher Lee) just not sure who would play Binky though 😉

Warning, nerdy vehicle lighting designer content below!

Best thing to do is start looking at the basics:

Are the lenses clean?
Are the lamps adjusted correctly for dip and aim?
How old are the Bulbs as halogen bulbs degrade over their life.
Is there condensation inside the light as this can cause rust in the lamp terminals and shorten the life of the bulbs.

If the lenses are going cloudy you can get polishing kits to fix this ( but these tend to be of dubious quality and are usually only a stop gap as the plastic lens has probably degraded so badly if this has happened it will be far weaker and liable to crack)

After market HID kits are flat out illegal. Sorry guys, if the cops don’t notice ( and they usually won’t) the MOT inspector probably will as he will look for the E marking on the lamps and the test centres are on the look out for these systems now. Also it’s an illegal mod in the eyes of your insurance company…so if you have had an accident…
The same goes for LED bulb kits.

You can get higher power bulbs but again you have to be careful, the super high power halogen bulb kits ( they are marketed as Xenon bright but they are not Xenon HID) are of varying power output and highly variable performance improvement but the lifespan of the bulbs range from poor to dreadful. I’ve heard of people blowing out sets of these bulbs in less than two months of night driving….not good at £20 plus for a pair.

High power bulbs lifespan tends to be about 200hrs whilst normal halogen bulbs are at about1200-2000 hrs. Proper OEM Xenon HID’s are at about 10,000hrs plus and new LED car lights are rated at whole life of the car ( so it’s assumed they will do 20,000hrs) but these are really only widely available on high end Audis, Mercs etc. so for performance you do pay for what you get at the moment. LED headlights will be more widely available over the next 5-10 years as they use a lot less power (3-5w as opposed to 55w on halogen) so they help with CO2 emission reduction.

Told you it was nerdy content…

Auxiliary lights are not illegal (providing they are E marked) though but again it’s a mod to your car so the insurance company needs to be informed. But if you want to go down this route one of my ex colleagues makes rather nice high performance road legal LED high beam lights which are the far side of awesome….as used on the TopGear toyota hilux they took to the magnetic North Pole. 🙂

Nice to watch that this morning, not sure if they made the stage one landing though ( but here’s hoping)

If you have an iPad try out Autodesk sketchbook pro and get a decent stylus to go with it. I use a basic wacom Bamboo, (you can now get bluetooth ones that mimic pressure sensitivity but they are still not as good as using a proper tablet and stylus) and it’s very good for sketching and quick graphics. IMHO Sketchbook Pro is far more intuitive than a lot of other programmes out there as it’s for sketching/painting rather than purely photo manipulation or vector graphics which is a bit of a black art.

However, for the real deal you will need to go to a Wacom Tablet that is at least A4 sized ( preferably bigger), a half decent PC or Mac, a good graphics card, fast HD or SSD and a stack of RAM, the biggest hi res screen you can afford and sketchbook pro/any other decent sketching software plus photoshop and illustrator.

All expensive but a good investment if you are aiming to do any work professionally or at least half seriously.

Just a warning, a lot of the online tutorials for Photoshop and illustrator range from mediocre to useless due to the complexity of the software, face to face tutorials are much better providing you can get a good teacher. Oddly enough though some of the “for Dummies” books and “illustrator/photoshop in east steps ” are actually very good indeed if you are starting with the software.

You’ll struggle to find any meaningful distance off road riding in the bay as there simply aren’t the bridleways, to be honest this is pretty much the issue for a lot of South Devon actually. You can get some riding done but just be prepared to do a lot of homework with OS maps and use a lot of lanes and roads to link the off road sections up.

However, the trail centre at Haldon is not far and, of course the really good stuff on Dartmoor is a 30-45 minute drive away and these should keep you busy for years.

Oh, and it’s Devon so you will need to learn to love short, vicious and very steep climbs 🙂

A few more ideas:

MTB helmets are fine but ditch the peak.

Get a decent (or half decent) track pump with a pressure gauge and pump your tyres up to at least 80psi. You will hear people insisting that road bike tyres should be inflated to 100-110psi but this is only if you want low rolling resistance for racing. Icy/wet roads at the moment should mean you can reduce the pressure a bit for a tad more grip and comfort.

You can use MTB pedals and shoes, there is nothing wrong with these and they will work fine…until you go round a corner while pedalling. After your first encounter with the dreaded pedal strike you will then understand why road pedals are one sided and have a lower profile. Cheap shimano pedals and basic DHB road shoes are a wise investment.

Ride with your hands on the hoods if you are new to drop handlebars. Don’t touch the brakes (especially the front) while pedalling hard out of the sadle…road surfaces are hard and unforgiving, you will learn this painful lesson quickly.

Hi-vis clothing is a matter of personal preference but bright colours and lots of scotchlite/reflectives are probably a better idea.

Get a really good, bright taillight. Use it in the daytime too. A good front strobe is a very good idea as well.

Work on the assumption that all other motor vehicles can’t see you and even if they do, get used to the fact that a sizeable minority of road users really are trying to kill you.

Beware of White vans or worse, a fleet van from a medium/large firm (usually with three people in it, one asleep/reading the Daily Star, one driving and one to give the driver ideas: “go on, nudge ‘im”)…see above.

Taxis, ditto.

Learn to ride primary. If you don’t know what this means, look it up. It does work, even for for the minority of drivers who think that this then means its open season on cyclists.

Bells are great on kids bikes, yelling is far more effective.

Now, if that hasn’t put you off:

Find some good quiet roads, lanes, etc.

You can bunny hop, wheelie and manual road bikes, they are rather good for this too, just watch Peter Sagan.

Be staggered at the speed you can go and the distance you can cover compared to your mountain bike.

Don’t be disheartened by achieving a 4582nd placing on the local Strava hill segment

Finally:

Wave at other cyclists, roadies tend not to hang around for a chat especially if they are going in the opposite direction but will wave, even if it’s raising one index finger off the bars for a second or two in acknowledgement of your passing 🙂

Instruction manuals?

I mean, why bother? Nobody reads them, particularly car ones, particularly the section in them about how to change your light bulbs… 😉

Sounds like your company has been circling the plug hole for more than a while now STM.

I know it sounds a bit flippant but Chin up, it may be for the best and a man of your talents should be ok in the long run.

Ever thought of starting up on your own (or with some of your colleagues) in the same business? That’s a tough route ( I know from personal experience) but far more rewarding than working for numpties and you get to learn from all of their mistakes and use the knowledge you have gained over the years to try and do things better.

Go and have a look on civinfo.com as there is a how to on this somewhere on the site.

You can get into the back of the head unit and fit a T connector so you can fit additional accessories to the car ( most likely is a combined usb/card reader/line in box). The how to for this involves the cunning use of a spatula to open up the dashboard! Otherwise a good car hifi shop can fit this all for you. You can also use a Honda dealer but they will charge a lot to fit this.

You can also get a third party bluetooth kit to plu into this that should also link to your phone.

Kind of struggling to see the design rip off unless it’s the fact that there are stars on both Jerseys which is not even a pattern feature that is unique to those two.

Wiggle one has a geometric pattern, the Ana Nicoola one has a random pattern. Colours are different too.

Add in the lower horizontal stripes and day glow piping ( which seems to be DHBs new signature style) and there is more than enough difference to show no plagiarism occurred.

You might be able possibly to prove influence (which isn’t illegal…in fact all designers do this) but plagiarism or copying is a completely different thing and this is certainly not a case of copying.

.

Still going through the second season on DVD.

It’s good but I just can’t help thinking that everyone should stop being so morose and flippin well cheer up, I mean, it’s not the end of the world is it?

Sounds great but we’ve been here many times before

Data needs to be peer reviewed ( not just observed by “independent experts”…makes no mention of who which is always a bit suspicious) and experiment needs to be independently replicated and confirmed….lots still to do even if ( and it’s a very big if) everything gets confirmed so don’t hold your breath.

no-one seems to be asking the really big question, namely: what tyres was he using? 😉

By the way, Ashdown forest is legendary for its highly forward thinking, positive and welcoming attitude to mountain bikers. Don’t worry, it’s only because they can’t burn witches anymore.

Defo go for the bags of oregano…

And when he complains tell it’s really good “herb”

Try the Dorset ride in this:

You can cut the ride down a bit if that’s too much mileage.

If you don’t want an MPV then:

Honda Civic estate. Better fuel economy than pretty much anything else (60-70mpg in the real world), clever rear seats and huge boot.

Kia Ceed wagon.

Nobody’s mentioned the new Nissan Qashqai either which looks very good indeed. Nearly brought one earlier this year.

Interesting list there mefty.

Rolls Royce Aero Engines:nationalised to avoid bankruptcy in the early 1970’s when developing engines for the L1011 as it was viewed (rightly) as being in the national interest, privatised in 1987, now seems to be doing really rather well and making very good products.

BT seems to be doing rather well: My mum used to be a civil servant in the late 60-early 70s and was assigned to the Post Office. Her job entailed telling people why they couldn’t have a phone line installed in their houses as they didn’t have any spare capacity to expand the network…

I lived in Germany in the mid 1990s, Deutsche Telekom seemed to operate in exactly the same way! According to colleagues who are still out there they still do.

However, I do agree that a great many PFI’s are a total waste of money although those chickens will only come home to roost in about 10-20 years time.

A CD of nightfreak and the sons of Becker by The Coral.

Bought in gatwick when travelling to Italy for work. I liked it so much that halfway through its first play the CD became a handy drinks coaster on my desk for the 18months duration of my work secondment.

just trying to work out why some of you reckon they fall foul of building regs.

The only thing I can see is no bannister on the main staircase (v. easy to sort out). The ladder to the mezzanine may be an issue if thats counted as a separate room but not sure it would be. Again easy to fix with a “proper” staircase and only an issue if you need a mortgage…they didnt use a mortgage to finance the build. Im not an expert but I guess house insurance is more concerned with whether its structurally sound, house is also a rebuild not a new build so that might get round a few issues too.

actually quite nice to see a house on Grand Designs done for only 120k as opposed to usual barmy stockbrokers spending a couple of million on an underground bunker in Putney that includes the mandatory equine jacuzzi and indoor 5 a side football room in a art-deco/nihilist glam rock fusion style.

Aplkit Viper or Gamma. Gamma has a battery pack on the rear strap that includes a small red tail light, Viper has more white LED light options. Both are fine for running on dark roads.

Just add some reflectives to your running shoes/clothing and a clip on red LED on your back pocket

Don’t worry about the groupset as even Sora is pretty good now, instead take a good look at the fit of the bike, the ride, the frame and the wheels, in that order. Road bike components don’t wear out anywhere near as fast as a mountain bike, the key issue will be your fitness which will get better as you ride them more, provided you actually enjoy riding on road!

If you like the bike you will be riding longer distances on it too.

Lots of really good road bikes available for £850 so don’t worry about the budget unless you desperately want something super lightweight. There are some pretty good Carbon bikes are on special offer at the moment but the alloy frame/carbon fork ones are really good too so you’ll actually be spoilt for choice.

Also don’t forget some shoes/pedals though basic Shimano SPD R’s are dirt cheap and work very well, as for shoes, Wiggle and Dhb is your friend!

Most likely it’s the freehub springs/panels that need changing, might also be the outer bearing in the freehub that has gone meaning that here is play in the hub under hard pedalling load.

Ditto Endura masai.

They look good and seem to be well made. Photochromatic goes near transparent so good for night riding too.

Oh yes, overall shared costs are lower but the biggest issue of all…

Soft furnishings:

Ditto the pair of binoculars idea (10x50s are a good starting point) but make sure you get a tripod mount for them and a half decent tripod too.. Other ideas are to use a spotting scope and tripod. Both will work very well to get you started and you don’t have to fork our a lot of money on a “proper” telescope right at the start.

Just avoid the cheapo telescopes form Argos or similar. They are sold with very high magnification as a headline figure but don’t have the light gathering or optical performance to make this actually work.

To be honest Ollie, I’d stop worrying about Sally having the QOM. After yesterday’s sterling effort she deserves it 8)

The bit at Amberley is the crossover where there are some slightly/very overgrown and vaguely signposted routes (wasn’t sure if it was actually a Bridleway or only a foortpath) next to the road as opposed to on the road. All done to try and segregate the riders and walkers from the traffic. The problem comes from having the trails either side of the road and the actual road crossing points at the junction with High Titten on one side or the farm access road a bit further up the main road on the other. The few meters of offset depending on the route takenmight be enough to muck up the GPS track on Strava. Whoever set up the Strava segment for the SDW might have taken either one of these or just gone down the road instead.

We used to play the clunkiest ever flight sim on a ZX81, it required a lot of imagination to get around the limitations of graphics and frame rate and a great deal of stabbing at that touch pad keyboard to play.

Now if you really want retro there was a version of Zaxxon ( crazy monochromatic isometric graphics ) on one of my relatives Apple2 that my 13 year-old self thought was the most amazing thing ever, then we got a BBC micro and “Elite” came along….ah, happy days 8)

We’ve had one of these for about 6 years, it works really, really well.

Yes its a bit expensive but the food is cooked so much better (not the usual BBQ burned to a crisp on the outside/Raw on the inside)food doesnt dry out and you can do full roasts while camping: Roast Beef, Lamb shanks etc. Does all the normal BBQ type food well too.

Best BBQ you can buy to be honest.

Doing a full roast chicken dinner and roast potatoes for my teammates at 2am while at the 24-12 a few years back was a highlight 🙂

Claiming that Nick Clegg is the most successful LibDem leader since Lloyd George in face of reality is the most impressive bit of spin heard in a very long time. In fact I’m gobsmacked

Ok, so you’re gobsmacked.

Reasoning: Nick Clegg brought his party into a coalition government, he’s DPM ( regardless of what you think of that) and the party has MPs in several major departments (treasury, trade and industry and education)

You might not agree with their policies and you might dislike or hate the person ( in which case, get out a bit more) but I can’t help thinking that a great deal of the anti Lib Dem vitriol comes from a lot of Labour supporters who either can’t get over loosing the last general election, went and voted Lib Dem instead of Labour to keep the Tories out and simply can’t get over the fact that the Liberal democrats then didn’t do the decent thing and roll over and go into Coalition with Labour….”ooh, how dare they” or they are livid Conservatives who also can’t get over not winning the last election that was so rightfully theirs…

ITS A COALITION GOVERNMENT FFS! You won’t get everything you want ( a bit like real life)

Hang on, it’s a bank holiday Monday, I’m off to enjoy the rest of my day instead of being flamed for holding an opinion and making reasoned ( or not 🙂 )arguments.

Well, regardless of what you think of the Lib Dems or Nick Clegg, he’s actually the most successful Lib Dem leader since Lloyd George…and yes, I know he was a Liberal (created the welfare state by the way)

A junior coalition party is always in a bad position, dammed if you do and dammed if you don’t. Coalition with Labour at the last election would have meant government with no majority and no actual mandate so nothing would have got done and you probably would have had another General Election within a year with the same result. The lib Dems always stated before the election that they would enter coalition talks with whichever party had the most votes/seats and that is exactly what happened. If you’re party is doomed you might as well go out having been in government as you will at least have had a chance to made a difference as opposed to shouting from the sidelines.

Also loving the comments about tuition fees, Yes, true ( disagreed with them on turning against that) but that wasn’t part of the final coalition agreement: you won’t get everything you want.

However, if you think that’s bad, I do remember a party standing for election after taking the country into a rather large , costly and hugely unpopular (possibly illegal)war…They got re-elected a couple times afterwards so it’s always good to see where people’s priorities lie.

By the way, two people who are prospective parliamentary candidates ( ie not MPs) saying their leader should resign does not a revolution make….possibly also mean they will have some “interesting” discussions this week with head office.

Very sad to see such a wonderful building in flames. Just read that the Library has been destroyed which is an worldwide architectural loss

Really really bad for the students as a lot will have had their degree show work destroyed before their final exams or their final year show,. You can’t just re-sit the exam if the actual work has been destroyed, it all needs to be redone which is up to several years of work.

v. glad no one was hurt.

I’ve got both, very similar performance but the SLXs have a bit more bite and feel than the Deores (which may be due to using XT rotors with my SLX brakes) and the SLX’s levers have an lever reach adjust knob, the Deores have an Allen bolt reach adjuster instead.

TBH both are very good. Piece of cake to bleed and shorten the hoses too 🙂

Every election since the War has produced a majority government from a minority vote

Er, except the current one…..regardless what you think of coalitions this one does ( or at least did at the point of the election) have a majority mandate from the electorate. If you use the argument that the when you include all the voters whether they voted or not they still did not have a majority then you have just possibly answered the question “why should. I bother to vote?”

In a democracy you need to either vote for the candidate or party that’s is closest to your views or if you don’t want to do that you need to get off yer backside, state what you believe in and and stand for election. Failing that you need to shut up and stop moaning 🙂

Don’t panic, same thing happened to me just before Easter. LBS said that they could recut the BB threads or fit a longer Bottom bracket but that this would most likely just creak like mad when pedalling.

Frame is now at BETD being repaired ( new drive side BB sleeve installed) , costs about £70-75 for the work plus the courier costs. Far better than trying to bodge repair it and way cheaper than a new frame.

Define Irony:

I’d define it as the idea of an a political party that is utterly against membership of the EU and the European Parliament wanting to be elected to the same EU parliament…. 😯

Or put a “for sale” sign on it.

Don’t move the car…perhaps instead build a rockery and a strategically placed water feature or two.