I think I know where you’re talking about. I don’t know if the landowners are behind the signs, but they have been annoyed at some of the cheeky in the past year and that’s been discussed on some local MTB Facebook groups. Mainly it seemed to be the blind exit rut track spilling a pile of dirt into the road that tipped them over the edge.

It might be someone else though. Lockdown seems to have really brought out the wannabe trail cops everywhere, it’s like New Year on steroids: more people out more of the time, some now all indignant about things they otherwise wouldn’t see for most of the year. There’ve been people putting up unofficial NO BIKES signs on Yorkshire Water land

Yeah, it’s very much in the over-the-top ridiculous vein of games like SSX, it’s not meant to feel like mountain biking – more chaining combos of ridiculous unrealistic moves (it makes my guts scrunch every time I see the rider land backwards with no fakie animation).

In a very different style, one of the nicest looking mountain bike games I’ve seen is Lonely Mountains.

The game I’ve played that feels most like riding a bike is, weirdly, Super Hexagon. Something to do with commitment, control, and the way it makes you use central and peripheral vision simultaneously.

Not mine, but a story I’ve never forgotten from the B3ta newsletter:

"I am 23, staggering in to the kitchen of my
    family home, fighting a hangover. I am wearing
    my trusty towelling dressing gown, and nothing
    else. I open the fridge door, with my back to
    the rest of the kitchen. I thought I was alone.
    I feel a rumbling. "Ah, I feel a little
    windy-pop a-rising!" I happily sing to myself,
    looking forward to the gas release relief.
    I squeeze a little - too hard in hindsight -
    and out pops a slimy, booze endued jobbie,
    right on the kitchen floor. I am slightly
    taken a back by this, but not overcome. That
    was until I shut the fridge door, turn around
    and see my Mum, Dad, Uncle, Auntie, Sister,
    Gran and Grandpa sitting quietly having tea
    and toasted crumpets." (T-Bone Sorbet Jnr)

That’s a shame about file formats.

I knew someone who worked for them in Nottingham way back, have always heard good things about Serif as a company. After years looking for a Photoshop replacement, I took the plunge on Affinity Photo a few months back and have not regretted it once. It’s the only thing that’s measured up for me.

Terry’s Belly is an arm killer. Definitely check out your lever position, and another thing I’ve found can contribute to arm pump is running rebound too fast. If your fork’s not packing down that’s good, you might have a little headroom to try slowing it down a little.

Grip sizing has become important to me. Too small = arm pump. What I was taught by a grip company is that when you grip them firmly but not white-knuckled, your first two fingers should not quite, or only just, touch the pad where your thumb meets your palm. As a rule of thumb, that’s worked really well for me.

If the handle’s bent or the rear of the moving jaw has been used as an anvil, you know it’s been abused. Those are the most immediate things that’ll make me pass one by.

Record seem to get all the attention on ebay. I ended up with a couple of old Woden ones. They got bought by Record, long before Record got bought by Irwin.

Yeah, probably…

None Makita batteries I found have been good but no idea how they compare to the much more expensive originals.

Not the same batteries but might give you an idea. These can be a bit tedious to watch, but he’s pretty thorough. Short version: brand name tool batteries will tend to be built from higher quality 18650 cells. Off-brand batteries generally do fine though.

Sorry for your loss, Northwind :(

I’m in

ClamXAV. There are viruses out there for OS X, as well as browser vulnerabilities. I wouldn’t be complacent.

Hello SaxonRider, no, you’re not wrong and yes, it is insane.

Got rid of my car nearly twenty years ago and haven’t looked back. I have to rent or borrow a couple of times a year at most, and I HATE it. Around 50% of urban space is dedicated to cars, and that seems to be invisible to most people. If it’s not frustrated people crawling around in bumper-to-bumper single occupancy boxes, it’s idiots distracted by their phones. From the the roads to the facebook comments, there’s something about driving that fundamentally seems to break people’s brains.

I once had a pair of floating rotors. Found they needed truing much more often than any steel rotors I’ve had before or since, so got rid.

…and as we’ve seen before, centrists definitely aren’t stuck in 1997 and the press are definitely extremely reasonable and sensible.

Its a shame too many of you believe the lies in the press / media about Corbyn
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jeremy-corbyn-media-bias-labour-mainstream-press-lse-study-misrepresentation-we-cant-ignore-bias-a7144381.html?fbclid=IwAR3-e6BCxiduVkVQGj7OU_XCBm5C9xu1haBwIGhYkjVOyzsATjbvkBLwuf8

It’s all his own fault for making himself not unmisprepresentable enough. If he was just playing the game by taking bungs from fracking companies and going to New Age Corporate Strategy Retreats, everything would be great and the media would be nice to him.

Has anyone tried turning the Binnersbot off and on again?

Hello lunge, have some homework

I see the Lib Dems just announced their own shadow cabinet.

If only evil Jezza would just stop blocking Jo from leading a fantasy government with no mandate.

I see according to Swinson logic, Ken Clarke, who voted for Theresa May’s brexit deal every time, is a remainer, and Corbyn, who voted against it every time, is a brexiteer. Right, got it. Nothing weird going on there at all.

That they seem happy to risk hard brexit rather than compromise is rather telling.

As someone much funnier than me said of the Lib Dems plans: “Hard brexit and a 5p tax on plastic straws”

I don’t look at politics news much because it just indicates the same paralysis most days, but excluding the Tory leadership circus, what I’ve picked up from the past six months or so is:

– A few MPs stand down, the Labour ones citing their deep and principled hatred of racism as the cause, and form what eventually becomes Change UK
– At their launch, one of the Change UK MPs immediately says something racist on stage
– Lib Dems demand second referendum
– Jeremy Corbyn says he’d back a second referendum
– New Lib-Dem leader loudly states absolute refusal to work with Jeremy Corbyn.
– Not many weeks later: Lib Dems and Tom Watson condemn Jeremy Corbyn for not working with others
– Corbyn very explicitly states willingness to work with others, making specific concessions
– Everyone stares at their feet before resuming mutters of “corbyn iz bad”
– Change UK polling at 0%

So we appear to have commies willing to actually make concessions to centrists for the sake of progress. Meanwhile, the Extremely Sensible Centrists seem continuously willing to set everything on fire and drive it off a cliff while going “LALALA NOT LISTENING”, and not even trying to hide their hypocrisy. While claiming they’re the adults.

You’re all **** bonkers.

Can’t say, would be nice if one of the recent group reviews of inserts had included pro core.

It will, though not a new review. I’ve got a couple more reviews to finish off before writing a quick wrap up talking about my experiences with them all. Overall, I lean more toward the tougher, more expensive foams than Procore now, but it has been bulletproof in the years I’ve run it.

LEDs tend to be able to run off a range of voltages, but around/just above their max will run very bright and burn out quickly. Often people designing their own lights using LED strip will run them off (e.g.) 9v instead of 12v. Drops the brightness a bit, but allows them to run off a lower amperage power supply, reduces cooling needs and will give them a much longer lifespan.

Don’t.

If you think your sister’s weight gain has underlying causes or stresses, be supportive and help with those instead.

The latest payer I had was a big corporate doing staged payments for a six month project. Payment schedule all agreed and signed, but payments outsourced to another company who I had to ring up and chase for every invoice. A couple of weeks to a month late each time, but not much work to pester them into it.

Biggest hassles tend to be universities and colleges though. I gave up guest lecturing because getting paid often took more work than doing the lectures. Worst was a college that sent a £200 invoice back, demanding it be split into at least a dozen different line items.

I don’t think it’s possible to weight the outside pedal and not have it at the bottom of the stroke, is it…?

Almost but not quite, your inside foot is still pushing down too. My cranks tend to end up diagonal, outside foot hovering a little behind the bottom of the stroke. I used to think that was sloppy technique, but have learned it’s a good thing.

Lowering your outside foot drops your centre of gravity and increases traction, which is why it’s more important for flat corners. If you overcook a berm and lean too steeply into it though, it’ll start to behave like a flat corner and your rear tyre will likely break loose. At that point, from a slightly diagonal cranks position, your outside foot gets pulled forward and down, lowering your CoG that last bit and helping you regain traction. If your outside pedal is already all the way down, then it’s more likely the tyre will just keep sliding.

I can’t find the one right now, but Lee McCormack regularly does good explainers on his blog: https://www.leelikesbikes.com/

He talked about diagonal cranks, inside foot leading as a good general cornering position that gets your CoG lower for traction, or lets you level the pedals out to pump.

Second for Gravity Lab – got really good, quick service in their Bourg branch last week after realising my shock bushings were done.

They do make MTB tyres, but they all seem to be 26“

the cheapest place online is Dolphin Fitness who I’ve used for many years.

Thanks, @cinnamon_girl. I’ve been thinking about the amount of plastics in our bathroom, so just bulk bought for the next year or so.

Ecover laundry liquid too. The three local shops that do refills have run a gamut from “Sorry, we’ve run out, try again next week” to “We’ve decided Ecover aren’t ethical enough” (they didn’t explain why). It’s taken longer to get a refill than to use up a second bottle.

Yeah, did this in 2014, don’t have specific Midlands recommendations, but it was looking at band vans that got us the right one. Sprinter crew cab was comfortable for four of us, with a road + MTB each.

They come off the same way a wheel would turn if you rolled your bike backwards. They screw on the same way as a wheel spins when the bike’s going forwards.

I’ve had various other methods, but the above seems to be almost completely idiot/hangover proof.

@brant, that canal photo is from 2015 I think. As Mark pointed out in the replies, that’s the STW office and it has solar panels on the roof nowadays.

(Edit, ah, sorry, just saw you don’t have power over it)

Yeah, get your sales people to offer them the better deal later, when their user numbers have increased.

I know freelancers who deal with “do this cheap and there’ll be much more work down the line” in a similar way, and flip it to say they’ll charge full price on the first job, then outline the discounts they’ll give on repeat/subsequent work. Gets rid of liars quick.

The lack of empathy some of you exhibit here, to the OP and people in general, is genuinely shocking.

To everyone saying “just ignore it”, should you ever end up in a position where you’re taking the brunt of something like racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, or transphobia, you’ll find that’s not how they work. It’s not one comment here and there, they’re part of a constant drumbeat that wears people down, bit by bit, every. single. day.

Telling targets of prejudice to ignore it is like telling people at the leisure centre to just ignore the diesel someone’s pouring into the pool.

Sorry to read this Rachel :(

And yeah, I’ve been disgusted by the same comments from the same users. They seem to think it’s edgy and fun, but they just look like massive bell ends. If discourse is a gene pool, these people are pissing in the shallow end and the forum would be better off without them. There’s a bunch of friends I ride with who don’t post here anymore because of this kind of thing. There are thread titles I don’t click on because I know it’s going to be the same few obsessive, misinformed people spreading hate.

In the last decade, everywhere online, a lot of people got very good at skating right up to the edge of forum rules without explicitly breaking them. The only online communities I know that have lasted without succumbing to this are ones that have rewritten their rules to aggressively weed these kind of people out.

Did Binners switch to reading the Daily Mail? Has anyone actually seen a picture of Jeremy Corbyn’s magic “Stop Brexit” button? Is there something I’m missing in seven MPs leaving Labour, supposedly over racism, then one of them immediately saying something racist on the telly?

I’ve not looked in any of the politics threads for a few years. Can anyone give me a quick recap?

Wow. George C. Parker had nothing on this bunch of chancers.

OP, you’re mixing up “free speech” and “lack of consequences”. Happens quite a lot nowadays.

The HC blade won’t fit the MT2 master cylinder – they use a different spring and recess. Not sure what the cheapest master cylinder it will fit is though.

Well it turns out when the actual nazis turn up it kind of gets invalidated. Godwin on his own law:

By all means, compare these shitheads to Nazis. Again and again. I'm with you.

— Mike Godwin (@sfmnemonic) August 14, 2017