Surely the best alternative to Twitter is no Twitter?

Sometimes I do the following to read an article behind a paywall:
Right click to open into an incognito window. Hit Ctrl-A then Ctrl-C as soon as it loads.
Paste it into the word processor (or whatever) of your choice (paste as text only if you don’t want all the gubbins along with the text).

Not at all surprised. I just got a letter from the other MTB mag I subscribe to (Velo Vert) to say that they are moving from 11 issues per year to 4.

Also should have said he was raising money for a charity that supports people affected by Covid: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/verticalmarathon

We could do a lot more of this in Scotland, there are plenty of suitable locations for joined up generation & storage to work.

Yeah, why not, I’ve already given up on the idea that any of the Highlands is going to continue to look anything like wild land. Is there any hill in Scotland you can’t see a wind turbine from on a reasonably clear day?

what could a private security contractor actually do if they caught you riding on the access track?

Ask you to leave. That’s it.

If they want to make it an offence for you to go onto the course they would have to take out an injunction naming you.

We have 4 hours or so worth of UK consumption from pump storage IIRC. We have nowhere to build a lot more.

There is a bigish new one about to be built above Loch Lochy. https://www.coireglas.com/

how the hell does he get a 1000m descending lunchtime ride?

This was yesterday’s ride.
https://strava.app.link/VP3RfYqzrub

Yeah, I’ve decided the lunchtime ride is definitely off.

Starting to feel a little bit wobbly now, so might head home to rest.

If they didn’t at least give it minimum headroom, I’m guessing it was designed the 1500’s and they’ve long since folded?

We moved in at the start of last year – it had been fully refurbished/converted from previous use.

Votes on whether I should cancel my lunchtime ride…

Head feels slightly weird, but I am lucid enough to post pictures on STW and know who the current prime minister is. Bleeding has stopped.

Lunchtime ride would include 1,000m of descent on rocky/rooty trails.

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I love the fact that they called it KIS.
Keep It Simple Stupid – don’t add unnecessary complexity to anything! That includes springs that are trying to straighten out your steering.
Has anyone had a go at seeing it would feel like by attaching a bungees to your seatpost and putting one to each side of your handlebars?

Living is tricky at best

Yep, have to agree with that.

Love this kind of philosophical debate.

Far too much of the time I feel like I’ve fallen into the worst of both worlds – selling most of my waking hours while not having enough time to mess about on bikes.

Yep that’s correct, but the flat rate being lower than the full rate of VAT (1/6 of gross or 16.67%) is because it’s intended to take into account your inputs (with the exception that you can still reclaim VAT on capital goods over £2k).

You probably need to register for vat as well

Only if you’re invoicing more than £85k per year. Otherwise probably a good idea to stay well clear of it (unless your customers can reclaim VAT on your invoices and you have significant expenses to reclaim VAT on).

Pierre – flat rate scheme generally means you don’t reclaim VAT on your expenses! You just don’t pay the full 20% on your sales.

Walking is definitely the enemy! I did Paris Brest Paris in 2019 and made the mistake of using road shoes. At some of the checkpoints you had to walk a few hundred metres from the bike park to the food/dorm area. Completely killed a set of cleats. Would use mtb shoes if doing it again.

Have ordered a set of Torch 2.0 shoes – let’s see how I get on with them. Hope the sizing is the same as the Specialized MTB shoes, as I’ve had multiple pairs of them, so know what fits me.

I’ve got a Minosharp 3, it sharpens my knives so sharp that my wife won’t use them.

This is genius – they will never go blunt, so you only need to sharpen them once.

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Finally able to get out for a decent ride after a spring/summer spent hanging around a hospital.

Fred Dibnah demonstrating proper use of a bosun’s chair. Chimneys not quite as bad for moving around as a yacht mast, but apparently the tall ones move quite a bit on a windy day!

Also, how flipping far out are they runnning those brake levers?

They should flip the stem, then it would really look like it’s vomiting cables.

I’ve done my fair share of driving dodgy farm equipment.

Case pivot-steer wheeled loader with no working brakes was the worst. Just whack it in reverse and give it some revs so the hydrostatic gearbox slows you down.
All fine until one day you whack it in reverse, hit the accelerator and nothing happens… accelerating down the hill towards the barn was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. Luckily after the bale grab smashed through the brick wall and the roof collapsed on top of it the loader came to a stop and I didn’t end up inside the wreckage of the barn (no cab or roll cage, so that would not have ended well).

acting as a food source for local wildlife

Phone battery may be the limiting factor for locating the particular beastie which has eaten you. Maybe better to go for a Spot tracker or similar which will keep broadcasting location for weeks.

It’ll be fine.

Flipping heck, that must have been dreadful for her.

Wow, that’s horrific. So if they’d called an ambulance the guy might have survived?
But instead they left him dying at the side of the road, then came back and moved him to somewhere he was hidden, then came back again and buried him and poured bleach on him.
What a horrible pair of individuals.
How were they caught?

I’ve seen a picture of a seat tube that cracked across a dropper cable hole. It was on a steel custom frame and the hole was put there by the frame builder, not by the owner. I believe the frame builder replaced the tube and repainted the frame as you’d expect.

Repose couteau – French custom is to keep your cutlery between courses, so you rest your knife on it when the plates are cleared and it stops you getting the table dirty.

This is what we do. Based in Chamonix.
https://ewp.uk.com/
I’m a forum member since 2001.

Good work. Hope the new bike works well for you.

I gave it a shot this evening. Where the “dodgy” notes had 3 strings I plucked them one at a time and found two were the same and one was out. Made that one match the other two and the key sounded good again.
There were a couple of keys with two strings (low notes) that were dodgy. I made the string that was flat agree to the other one and they sound ok now.
I also found 4 broken strings, all at the top end, and all on keys where there are 3 strings per key. I’m thinking that replacing those is definitely a job for a pro, but not too worried about them at the moment as they are keys that don’t see that much use and don’t sound too bad anyway.
I’m chalking it up as a win.

If I knew what % A was below concert pitch could I work out what frequency all the other notes should be tuned to?

The likelihood is that being old it will be tuned below concert pitch (A=440)

Yes, I was aware of this, and thinking about it that means the guitar tuner will be useless.

Amazingly after doing Scotland > French alps and reassembling the piano was still in tune!

Unfortunately it’s going out of tune (I think) because it gets some afternoon sun in its current location unless we shut the shutters (which makes the room very dingy). There isn’t really anywhere else in the apartment it could be moved to.

There are various options for repaying/extending payback period/taking a 6 month repayment holiday. The standard one meant that you started repaying 12 months after taking the loan.
If you took the loan in March 2021 (the end of the availability period) and took the 6 month repayment holiday straight away then that would correspond to repayments starting in September 2022. So that’s the latest anyone can start repaying.
Details here: https://www.british-business-bank.co.uk/ourpartners/coronavirus-business-interruption-loan-schemes/bounce-back-loans/

Agreed, completely depends on the use-case. If never going too far from home or always have a spare wheel close to hand then fine to just risk it and see if it fails – if it does it will probably after several thousand kms.

If I’m building a wheel I want it to be as good as I can make it so that I don’t get left stranded a hundred km from the nearest shop with barely any food or water.

1mm of thread showing outside the nipple is fine

I wouldn’t agree here – you’re aiming to have some head engagement so that the nipple head will not break at the seat.

Some good diagrams to explain it here:

https://kstoerz.com/freespoke/tech-threadengagement.php

Thoughts are with you XCGB hope you’re recovering well from surgery and the treatment doesn’t set you back too much and you can still ride hard.

My daughter who’s going to be 4 tomorrow has had a picc line (removed), an implanted chamber (removed), a broviac (removed) and two broviacs (currently in place) so I’ve seen quite a bit of central veinous catheters. They don’t seem to be all that sensitive, but it’s best to avoid pulling on them! Daughter has fallen into a swimming pool and got hers properly soaked in the shower and it didn’t cause any issues. We were pretty worried at the time though!

Probably best not to try any bog-snorkelling for the moment.

“died in the wool northern soulboy”

That bundle of wool is going to be pretty smelly when they find the corpse. Won’t be fit for much apart from making one of these: https://naturalendings.co.uk/eco-friendly-coffins/wool-coffins/