I borrowed (an admittedly very light carbon) one last winter for a ride. It had 5″ tyres. Patches of mud that usually have me gliding to a sticky halt, it just floated over, carrying speed. On the climbs, it had loads more traction.

Ah, the clue was in the thread title! I scoured the body text twice looking for the OS :)

Seashore is free and will do basic image manipulation:
http://seashore.sourceforge.net/The_Seashore_Project/About.html
Not really a patch on photoshop though.

Graphic (Used to be called iDraw until the company was acquired by Autodesk) is a cheap vector drawing package, again, not as powerful as Illustrator but I’ve found it fine for most small jobs:
http://graphic.autodesk.com

Open Source Mac is always worth a look before the app store:
http://opensourcemac.org

OSX or Windows?

I have a BC Trail King to swap out for my summer front tyre, which is starting to pack out with mud on some trails now. After riding the TK last winter, I don’t really want to put it back on though; IME it washes out pretty easily at the front. I keep gawping at Shortys and Vigilantes instead.

Really nice work Pook!

Have you thought about an Airshot? I’ve heard they’re brilliant.

(Sorry, I don’t know of any others apart from the Bonty and the Joe Blow)

They’re all doing this MintImperial, even when opened in a new tab:

Sorry I couldn’t make it down. Donated.

I’m on 800mm vibrocore bars and some well padded Odi grips. I wouldn’t be able to say yes, the vibrocore definitely makes a difference unless I took them back to a week of the alpine braking bumps that screwed up my hands a bit with cheapo ali bars last year, but the combination is noticeably plush and I’ve not felt any numbness, buzz or other effects in my hands in the months since fitting them. Placebo effect entirely possible.

I met Mike a few months back and asked him if it was just builders expanding foam. Short answer: No, they spent a lot of months experimenting with different foam types, and found the right foam in combination with internal caps not only attenuates vibration, but increases the fatigue life of the bars.

(Edit: If you do go for vibrocore bars, the 800s are made of a more complaint alloys than the 760s).

Cheers OP, been thinking about a new rear hub for a while.

Ah, not MBUK, it was MTB Pro. This was the review, the images are of the actual bike my mate got knocked down a bit from RRP.

“Despite Lloyd’s convictions to the contrary, we have our reservations about the long-term wisdom of using super-slim top and down tubes on a bike that’s bound to occasionally appeal to riders who like to push their machines to the limit”

No shit, it only took a few months for a tall but not-overweight, non-jumping twelve year old to break that frame :D

We used to speak in hushed tones about Merlins in the early 90’s:

Either that, or a Dave Lloyd. A friend’s parents bought him the Beez Neez, the very one that MBUK had reviewed and put on their cover:

The skinny top and down tubes cracked behind the headtube within a month or two, it was repaired and resprayed a graphite-bluish colour, and on the first ride they started to bulge in the same places again… not a great frame; we never got up to anything particularly rad.

I’m tempted by these :D
http://www.getgeared.co.uk/bobster-bugeye-goggles-clear

Been wearing Bolle Siliums for a while now, but having seen some facial injuries from similar styles over the past year, feel a little nervous about wearing a polycarbonate blade over my cheeks.

Use copperslip, pull them out twice a year or so to check them, and it’ll be fine.

I guess the slight greenish glow I could see above Burnley was it then. Still, it was a really beautiful starry night up on the moors though.

Lake district just now:
https://twitter.com/xplantrunner/status/651885128277458944
https://twitter.com/xplantrunner/status/651884467410345984

Same for now from Todmorden, crystal clear sky above but looks like there’s a big cloud bank to the north.

Cheers Daz, can’t believe I’d never ridden that bit of singletrack!

Chipps got a bad case of bog bell:

Cartograph

I’ll be there too.

Torminalis – Member
About 20Mbps. :(

Off, that’s a tough one isn’t it? I’ll see your 20 and raise it another 77.5 or so :(

OP: Bet they’re a standard thread. A thread gauge will be a few quid, then once you know the thread pitch and size, some decent steel machine screws will only be a few quid more.

—

A box of difficult to replace sewing machine spares that belonged to my aunt. Took about £100 and a year of looking to replace them. Live in landlord at the time: “No, I didn’t touch them”. He was busy storing stuff in the loft at the time, I looked up there several times but couldn’t find them.

Landlord three years later: “Were you looking for some sewing machine bits once? I just found these in a box of my stuff in the loft”. After I’d turned the air blue, he said “I don’t see how this is my fault”.

Star and Garter maybe. I’ve only been in there during the day, but it was pretty nice.

There’s Ed Oxley over in Hebden Bridge:
http://great-rock.co.uk

Acrylic:
http://www.plasticstockist.com/Acrylic-Mirror/Silver-Acrylic-Mirror.aspx

Polycarbonate:
http://www.plasticstockist.com/Plastic-Mirror/Silver-Polycarbonate-Mirror.aspx

They’ll cut it to size for you if you enter your preferred dimensions, a small bit will only be a few quid. Polycarb is shatter proof and a few quid more expensive, but acrylic tends to be more scratch resistant.

muggomagic – Member
Nitefighter BT21 from gearbest is around £40 and far better than solarstorm in terms of build quality (I’ve had 2 solarstorm x2 lights) and the battery pack included is good quality too.

I’ve been using one of these too, and it’s good. Go for just the head unit and, as Bregante says, buy a decent battery separately.

Bear in mind the driver might burn out and make the light very dim within a year. Buying cheap lights is always a lottery, but it generally works out cheaper than much better brands at the cost of more faffing. If I’m riding with a cheap one, I never go out with just a single light; always have a backup on my helmet or in my bag.

Laser if you can get access/know someone who can do the CAD work, setup, etc. and work precisely to take the right amount off. It leaves a great edge finish on acrylic.

Tomorrow’s front pages are attacking Cameron on new fronts, including some Murdoch press turning on him. Ashcroft is being sarcastic on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LordAshcroft/status/645962182165962753

Northwind – Member

Well observed that, nice one.

Can’t take credit, it’s one of the many things from Twitter that has made me giggle like a loon today.

opusone – Member
The thing that gets me about this is how obvious it is that he did it, as in how totally plausible it is.

Just consider that for a moment – someone has suggested that the elected prime minister of Great Britain put his cock in a dead pig’s mouth in order to be accepted by his posh chums… and it’s completely plausible.

Yep. Louise Mensch and assorted others have defended then later deleted defenses of students shagging dead farm animals, as if that’s a totally normal part of university life, yet not one person seems to have gone with “Nah, he wouldn’t do that”

Yeah, I reckon something like a figure 8 crit, but with a peloton slightly longer than half the course. Nothing could go wrong.

Harsher than the steel hardtail I usually ride. I expected the tyres to make it feel similar in that respect, but even with them soft it shakes me around quite a bit, and felt quite sluggish changing lines at speed or getting up onto little wall rides. I’m not a particularly rad or capable rider, but it felt like I was asking the bike to do stuff it wasn’t really designed for, i.e. it’s a decent bike but not suited to my riding. In terms of grip, probably doesn’t help that it has California-spec tyres :)

If you’re more into the winch and contouring trails than you are the plummet, I think it’s a great bike. Harsh ride if you’re trying to descend fast on it though.

(I’ve ridden one three times)

You can pick up lots of cheap secondhand bmx’s because they are either useless or stolen.
Buy carefully

Yeah, my previous £25 ebay BMX quickly became a £200 one once I’d done it up:

It was too short because I didn’t know what I was doing at the time :oops:

twistedpencil – Member

First picture post so might not work!

EDIT: Wombling cocks, can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong, too late to sort now, suffice to say the deck needed cleaning and the masonry repointing along with a lick of wood preservative on the French doors!

You used this URL to the web page rather than the image:

https://goo.gl/photos/YSunMvG9SqvsdNXu6

If you get the big version up and right click on it, your browser probably has an option like “open image in new tab” or the like. This might work, but it’s one hell of a long, mashed up URL google is spitting out:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/DbcHIN_fnB4nDjSRhM8CKph7U63I8aIuDCcqSm4Nm6M7YRiIww1QHmiHi4UFZtxmLnl_RW5bNZeOIUNbdNnePZSt2ZYI7Lv5wwCadrJRlVRSfmp8eGx7MmQ4iO4eS1Ecg3HH8IyoZQhSql7TKoSAr8uo3NE7-QTJ-Tt20bq-Id3pVR9FWSXCUfy49VQCZqwKEsJmxkSARLDIVsRVNDoiKi8AYFeDe5PR1qKLd-wJYt45BpVggiEbwytoBpnuItxZstOl2ODFdj0q9SVOmt5SFnFrp8MoPwT7IMOrbMiZHKeRFGeAn4Inb9gNp2aUlGuUOvYCwrfE7Ww3W82WKM284Zu1HAYowSJOqK639haFe3kyKj4dzmI3ZCNr_6flWEXpQxSQlnZBL1EUrAMe1THLsy-pqnnUnfe5kZSGHoyxYKc97hBhTlG2CNOhy96-w-dtEMs3rmalnyQsxSTNNshWzeS-0CZPOlvnTAt2r_a-AK3B2oNNCAf27M-WQioOkdbQ1rBb2IvRkGPZ7MxPSyByQMyc-SqMIjqvz_wRtOOy3Q=w2808-h1866-no

Test:

Nope! The forum seems to need a file extension on the end of the URL (e.g .jpg, .gif). I suggest rehoming anything you want to post here on imgur. It’s simple to use, and the best thing about imgur URLs is that while they come out as page links like this:

http://imgur.com/l8jJn4Y

you can just add .jpg (or whatever the file type is) the the end to get directly to the file:

Now that’s an overtake!

The coaches at the NCC explained it to me this way: 24″ bikes are more forgiving and comfortable to ride. 20″ will accept every bit of input you give, and might teach you more, but also accordingly amplify mistakes.

I bought a 20″ Flybikes one from Custom Riders. They usually have good bikes around half price just because they’re a year or two old.

Consensus from videogame developers last night was “WTF am I watching?” followed by “What a load of bollocks”

Rockstar had this to say:

@BBC Was Basil Brush busy? What exactly is this random, made up bollocks?

Dread to think what the legal fees were.

Cribbed from a few threads seen here before: The owner has had personal problems, and the result seems to be that the business is still taking money for MTB lights but not sending any out, giving refunds, or answering email.

Gloworm are distributed by Ison in the UK now.

I want to see Ratboy rag a pair down something.

To see some terrible riding with a similar invention, skip to about 8:20 in this:
https://youtu.be/O11hFiu43RQ?t=502

None of the characteristics displayed seem desirable. Unless you have immaculate pump technique, it seems like that forwards-backwards rocking is just going to make things a chore.