Did you check if their car has parking sensors, an alarm or adaptive cruise control?

Or one of those plipper thingies to unlock the car…

Dont get mixed up between SUV’s and Trucks (aka Pick-up’s) as theye are actually very different things:

SUV’s in Europe still have to comply with full NCAP crash test requirements including pedestrian impact tests. Trucks, on the other hand, are not classified as cars (or even IIRC, LCV’s for that matter) and therefore dont…

Way back when in the 80s Ford brought out the Sierra – possibly one of the first cars designed with aero in mind (dustbin wheel trims included)

TBH the Sierra had a pretty poor drag coefficient (Cd was about 0.37-0.4) and Cdx too, oh and that exciting design flaw that made it, ahem, “interesting” in sidewinds. I worked on a car by Daewoo (remember them?) where the Korean engineers decided to not do any aero testing and somehow managed to design the rear screen at the exact perfect angle that they got it to generate significant rear end lift when driving at high speed in nice constant gentle turns, like you get on say, a motorway…found out 4 weeks before production start! My old design boss at Ford would tell stories of how the Audi A2 aero was dramatically improved with two drinking straws attached to the rear lamps…But I digress…

Aerodynamics is a still a bit of a black art (spent more than a few interesting, very long late night sessions in wind tunnels or reviewing/correlating CFD data playing about with various cars while have aero engineers drumming this into me) and is just part of the overall efficency of the vehicle. It needs to be done with respect to a lot of other factors, sidewind/crosswind stability is very important, making sure you don’t create lift or indeed downforce as they can both muck up the cars dynamics if you get things wrong, getting cooling air into and then heat out of engines, rolling resistance (tyres have a huge impact on mpg), mechanical resistance, weight (screwed up by those pesky crash tests…) speed (very rough rule of thumb is you use 25% more energy to go at 80mph than 70mph) etc etc. Oh, and not driving with a lead right foot helps a great deal too…

Well, TBH I was a little disappointed that there were fewer films : 8 in season 2 compared to 18 in season 1 but some very good episodes nonetheless. I thought :The Tall Grass” and the “The Drowned Giant” (from a JG Ballard short story) were standouts, “Life Hutch” was really good too.

Went back to watch “Lucky 13:” and “The Secret War” from season 1…still awesome.

If you like short Sci fi movies I would heartily recommend searching out Neil Blomkamp’s Oats Studios Vol1, especially “Rakka”

ID/ICE card, foil blanket, pair of latex gloves, cotton wool, roll of fabric bandage, tape, Elastoplast-type bandages, candle, matches, flint/spark striker, pair of tweezers, torch, emergency whistle, small length of gorilla tape, cyalume stick and in winter one of those little snap to heat pads…sounds like a lot but it (nearly) all fits into a little Tupperware container in the bottom of my camelbak.
Oh, and Zip ties, lots of Zip ties…

Try South Coast Bikes in Hove/Southwick: https://www.southcoastbikes.co.uk

Well, I for one am hoping that the rumours are all true and once vaccinated I can finally ditch the card and make contactless payments by waving my hand over the reader in the supermarket checkout while saying “solucionis”…

Very long time user of Time ATAC’s due to having shonky knees and therefore need something with a lot of float and don’t get on with flats or SPD’s. With the exception of one early pair of XC4’s where one of the springs snapped (known manufacturing fault on the early batches so it seemed) , I can’t fault them.
The brass cleats need to be changed every 18 months-2years as they do wear out but this aside, the pedals seem to be pretty much bombproof and work when caked in mud. In my experience, snow seems to be the only thing that can really clog them up.

Ribble CGR

Merlin Malt G2X (a bit more expensive than £1k but you get a GRX groupset)

Sonder Camino Al Apex 1

Just be aware that there are waiting times on the ordering for some of these

If you’ve got Netflix id point any SF fan towards Annihilation (very, very good and it has a “Dark Link” scene that anyone who has played Zelda, Ocarina of Time, will be cheering through), also Maniac (very odd for the first few, well, most, episodes but stick with it)

Two great Anime series: Cowboy Bebop (not on Netflix anymore, boo…) and Knights of Sydonia (big bonkers space war)

Books, I always like William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, I started reading Liu Cixin’s “Three Body Problem” series last year…really good

Finally got to see Tenet a few days ago as I got it on BlueRay for Xmas, flipping awesome.

Following on from the Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox, I sat in a Zoom meeting, read some e-mails and got distracted by YouTube.

The Beatles have split.

WHAT??????

Michaelangelo

Yeah, I can paint ceilings too only I don’t spend years doing it as I tend to use a roller.

Nasaspacelfight.com’s youtube channel is always worth following for this as they post a nearly daily video feed from Boca Chica in Texas where the Starships and the new launch facilities are being built and the flight tests are being done (and occasionally go pop or bang too…)

crazy thing is the upcoming test is of just the current iteration of the prototype upper stage, the lower stage will be twice the height of this so the whole rocket is going to be bigger than a Saturn 5.

They do, its called the Gisburn… 🙂

Have some sympathy for the man please*, he’s losing his job as MEP at the end of December and his US-based “Trump’s best MAGA UK mate” meal ticket has just evaporated too (and if he’s lost £10k so much the better) is he’s obviously desperate to find a new outlet for his many talents** so is casting his eye around for a convenient passing bandwagon to leap upon***

* by this I of course mean that under no circumstances should you have any sympathy whatsoever for this odious little >insert the collection of nouns of your choice here<

** and by this I mean his talent (singular) as Odious little (see above)

***Again

“How it ends” available on Netflix, go on, I dare you, it basically just fizzles out after 2 hours of various “serious” things happening and people doing stuff and not a lot of sense being made but then more things happening…really should be retitled “Why did they bother? for that matter , Why did I bother?”

Im right there with anyone who mentioned “Highlander 2”, a film that with the epic line: Christopher Lambert: “What is it? Magic?”
Sean Connery:”A kind of…”

And thus jumps the shark so high it goes nearly into orbit.

Pretty much anything released under the Canon Golan/Gomez banner in the mid “80’s…

The 1989 Tim Burton Batman movie (and its sequels). Just, Plain. Terrible.

However,”Plan 9 from outer Space”, widely described as the worst movie ever made is rather charming…but its still pretty bad.

OP, it looks like a Magnum E controller. Magnum heating

We’ve got one in our kitchen. it worked for about 4 or 5 years then the display started to go a bit iffy (flickering), hasn’t worked for years and we haven’t got round to replacing it. TBH I keep meaning to get the manual thermostat head unit instead and see if the heated floor still works…

Paradoxically I’m certain they aren’t leaning to one side or the other.

Switch is great. Zelda is awesome. Get both.

Ditto what people are saying if you have paid fees and halls cost, will be difficult to get these back in full.

Key thing to ask is what you would do if you left Uni. If the answer is “I dunno, probably just go home” then TBH its probably best to sit tight and see what happens with the course over the next few weeks/months.

All colleges/universities are having issues with the start of term and are very much aware the the new intake students are being badly affected by this. Just remember that the course will not have properly started yet, its still the first week and while the whole freshers week activities have been screwed up things will be happening (I hope…they certainly are in the college that I work in as we are doing a lot of online activities and events as well as virtual general meet and greet) .

Get hold of your Student Union rep and have a chat, also there will be a student support team in the college who are there to help (should be available to you in spite of Covid)

Managed to get some dried Porcini mushrooms and a jar or grilled artichoke antipasti so very relieved that we have those essentials again, we have some Parmaggio but its being rationed just in case…

As for loo roll, just remember the three sheet rule: one for up, one for down and one to polish.

… do you mean a proper leather chammy ?

or, indeed, a chamois…

Not so much books but more authors:

SciFi: well I started many many years back with 2001: A space oddysey by Arthur C Clarke and rapidly moved to Larry Niven (Ringworld, Footfall, Lucifers Hammer and the Known Space series), Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. Loads of others including Iain M Banks especially the earlier culture novels such as Consider Phlebas, Player of Games and Use of Weapons . Frankly anything by Neal Stephenson is really good indeed (Cryptonomicon is standout brilliant as is Anathem), William Gibson’s Sprawl series (Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive etc) are definitive cyberpunk and the latest books such as Pattern Recognition (awesome) and The Peripheral are well worth reading. I got into reading Kurt Vonnegut and Joe Haldeman recently as well.
Liu Cixin’s “Three body Problem” trilogy is very different to a lot of Western SciFi: you learn a lot about game theory, Alien invasions as well as the Cultural revolution.

Fantasy: Ray Bradbury: frankly just everything he’s written as it ranges from golden age sci fi, through fantasy to horror . Neil Gaiman, ditto, also try his Sandman Graphic novels.
The Rotherwierd series by Andrew Caldicot, also the Rivers of London series by Ben Arronovich (think The Bill meets Harry Potter and you get the basic idea).

and that’s just scratching the surface, lots of good books out there.

How many of you use Amazon data centres or Amazon cloud computing?

Probably everyone. Probably most of you without even realising it, Probably also don’t realise that is where the majority of their income and profits come from.If you think that this is a new and novel problem then you need to check your history (look at the initial use of telegraph, publishing, newspapers, railways, radio, film/cinema, TV/Media, the first big dotcoms, etc…) and remember that the next thing that is invented will will change everything yet again.

Oh and in answer to the OP, try Currys PC world, Asda/Sainsburys/Argos etc and for general media electronics use RicherSounds (who, BTW, are excellent) 🙂

Ive had a pair of XC Wides on my full susser for the last month, its early days and I’m interested to see how they handle being run through the Winter but first imperssions are that they seem to be solid, light and well made. Freehub pick-up is very good (surprisingly so) and I quite like the noise they make too. Only issue is if they’re not in stock, delivery can be a bit slow at the moment.

Black cheese.

It’s Cheddar with charcoal.

BIL brought some for Christmas and yes, it was truly disgusting, I mean, if you want to make a black cheese surely you’d use liquorice? Or Marmite…

Or fire? But then I guess its just charcoal anyway.

50 shades of grey.

Go on you know you want to

6 years, yeah, right…

Just lifted from the resolver (links to money saving expert) website:

You should expect a private parking firm to fix a notice to your car before you leave the car park and then post you a follow-up within about 2 months.

If the parking firm has to get your details from the DVLA to send you a ticket by post alone, they have to send it within 14 days.

Definitely very much aware when I overtake cyclists as I know what its like on a bikes so go for load of space and usually move right across to the other side of the road (“treat the bike as a small car”…)

I always follow the simple advice that only overtake where safe to do so and the idea of you have to do several stages of checking before you finally commit to the manoeuvre and even then, you are moving the car to the wrong side of the road so you still need to be able to move back behind the over road user if anything goes wrong.

Also the car, sorry, driver you encountered is 100% end of a bell as he was obviously in such a rush he had to then stop and explain his limited driving ability, mental situation, flawed outlook on society, terrible music taste, poor life choices and general lack of sexual prowess to you, so…BMW? Audi?

BTW, kudos for staying calm. always the best thing to do when in that kind of situation.

Spinning top stops, or perhaps it doesn’t.

Son of dysfunctional parents is not particularly shiny

Go and search out Oats Studios on Youtube, particularly Rakka (really, really should be a feature length movie and its got Sigourney Weaver in it…) but there is a lot of other good stuff in there too that’s a great antidote to all the generic garbage that Hollywood tends to push out now

If you look at Flight radar in the middle of the night you and look at the English channel near Dover can see a Beechcraft KingAir recon aircraft (it flies out from the Midlands) as well as a “civilian UAV” based at Lydd that tracks back and forth looking for (I assume) illegal immigrants trying to cross from Calais.
Or they’re possibly trying to catch those who have exceeded their booze and ciggies quota in the Calais Hypermarkets…

Three biscuits that named after fascist dictators:

Well, you’ve got your Bourbon, your Garibaldi and your Huntley and Palmers Trotsky assortment…

FTFY what’s the best Strava alternative now the greedy b*****ds have downgraded the free version have said that yes, its a great app that everyone uses, but they’re quite a small company and really do need to try and become profitable to, you know, like, survive…

Ive got various car design images (cant do the image link thing so just use your imagination)

Are you a telecoms engineer Spooky?

Or takes care of the alarms in a gang of International jewel thieves

Spooky’s extra-curricular consulting activities for the criminal underworld is just to finance his lavish lifestyle, homebuilt camper vans and the occasional very bling single speed… :O)

O/P, its a mk2 Granada, with those wheels its probably a Ghia or maybe a 2.8 Ghia S so obvs. quite desirable…edit, just checked and the rear subframe is defo from a Granny (jeez I’m sad)

Knneththecurtain, Those are a Hilman Imp and a Ford Zephyr (both in surprisingly good condition for their age, how do they drive?) and I claim my £5

And basically thats typical Geraint Thomas – always expecting things for himself to be provided by others

Oh FFS…