Site looks OK to me (I haven’t looked for any errors though) – I think the problem you have is search engine optimization. I googled a few phrases like north east wedding photographer etc and didn’t see you anywhere on page 1 of google. If people can’t find you they can’t book you.

That’s where i’d be putting my money, organic SEO. Try and get that testimonials page as full as you can, and look at the way the site works with SEO. Installing your blog on the site directly will help, as will making sure keywords, text etc is all search engine relevant. Keep the front page often updated with relevant content, a good way of doing this is by putting your last blog entry on there. If you can afford it, doing things professionally will probably cost you several hundred pounds a month but looking at what you are charging you are well placed to recoup that investment fairly easily.

Mine’s got the sat nav and has a keypad like a phone you can use for the letter sort. The Sony DAB I demoed had 6 buttons across the top and you just pushed the button marked with the right letter to get to that entry in your phone book. I think there’s 2 types of Sony dab though, one is much more minimalist so you might not have that row of buttons.

It’s not great though – especially as my iphone sorts some contacts by last name, some by first name and the ford system only lets you skip to the first letter on the listing.

No short cage as such but they do the medium ‘GS’ cage in XT. Sits in-between the medium and short cage mechs from Sram.

I think the SGS long cage is 45 T and the GS med cage is 33t, you don’t mention the front ratios but assuming they are standard i’d worked out you’d need 37T – so longer cage.

That’s my understanding of it anyway, and why I stuck to long cage – I never tried the medium cage to see if it would have worked, others might say it’s no problem.

I have mine LHS as the fork lockout is on the RHS. Found it hard to reach while trying to use it on the fly as it was a bit far to the right . My solution was to go 1×10 and ditch the rear lever, the bar now goes grip,remote,brake. I have the lever set to push down too, I found pushing it away from you just felt clumsy.

Post drops fine, though I found I had to tweak how much cable slack there was to get it nice, and need to keep the post clean or it does get a bit sticky.

The small one next to me is running a standard seatpost with about 190mm of post in the frame at bottom position, i’d probably say 130mm is probably about as low as i’d take it, which is below the top tube join by about 20mm.

Bear in mind that you have about 8K tax free, and 12%NIC below 42K and 2% over it and have some cost to actually get to the office (probably). If you use the 50K salary as an example, you will easily end up with less than 1/2 of what you earned in that extra day in your pocket.

You’re still better off – but work/life balance and all that, obviously every circumstance is different but I think the choice of an extra day off each week rather than going to work for essentially a 50% pay cut would be very appealing!

You could however be financially better off by dropping back to 20% tax if you have perks with your job – i.e. a company car/health insurance etc. A decent BMW or Audi @ 40% tax could cost an extra 2-3K a year in tax over 20% which wouldn’t leave much change from that extra day…. and if you had free fuel that would be an extra £700 ish in tax!

If you can get to a large city fairly easily, flick through the city papers or look online, a few of the Hong Kong firms like Raja Fashions mentioned earlier in the thread do UK tours where they will measure you up at a hotel room and make a suit for you.

I’ve been into Raja’s shop in HK and they are often recommended – i’ve never used them though. Not as cheap as it used to be, when I first started going out to HK regularly about 5-6 years ago you used to be able to get tailored shirts for £22 a pop and a good suit for £3-400, it’s easily 50% more now.

How much grunt should the spring really give? It returns fine by hand, the problem is when you install the remote cable, the spring doesn’t seem to have enough to pull the cable back to return to unlocked. It just needs the slightest touch to help it along but it’s still useless as you may as well have crown lockout if you have to touch it each time!

I’ve just cleaned and greased the cable but still not playing ball – maybe it’s just the spring isn’t springy enough.

My 2012 Rebas definitely feel like the spring has more pull than these.

rickmeister – Member
Nick.. having been stopped by the police on my bike, for a roadside check they were not in the least bothered it was 2 yrs out of date. Listening to the conversations with their colleagues doing the pnc check, this information was not on their computer. All they had access to was was the date of passing my test, birth date and categories I could drive etc.

I think a lot of it depends on the copper doing the checking. I moved house about 6 years ago and never changed my license but was never stopped/got a producer/ticket etc in that time. The OH who is a copper recently told me she’d handed out a £1000 fine for a failure to change address, I got mine sorted PDQ!

I’m now due a photo card replacement, sent my license off to the DVLA with the money and a photo, they sent it back saying the photo was scratched (It wasn’t when I sent it.) Haven’t bothered to resend it yet…

My point about the size was that the parcel may have been taken, but if it is too large for recorded (mamadirt has posted the correct size allowance) then it may get held up further down the line, the postie who collects normally isn’t fussed what he picks up from a work collection.

They may then return to sender or write to you or just delay it (or stick it in a corner somewhere) – so give it a few weeks, or chase it up after the 15 day window with a tracking number which might shimmy them up.

I have a collection service and have had similar happen before, underpaid post usually gets delivered and they just send you a bill for the extra but for a large item or significant underpay it might find it’s way back to you or they might send you a bill before delivery.

A frame’s going to be too big for 1st recorded – if they’ve taken it as that then that’s probably why it’s not got anywhere. If you’ve posted as a parcel and not taken out any extra insurance you’ll get the basic insurance back maximum which I think is £42 at the moment whether its recorded or a parcel.

Give them 28 days, if nothing is head put in a claim, you’ll need proof of the frame’s value and you’ll probably spend the £42 on numerous calls to the 0845 number…..

I’ve switched to M&S home cover on recommendation, only switched for the bike cover really. The policy doesn’t seem to be quite as good now but still the most competitive i’ve found and being M&S you have a certain (possibly unfounded) feeling they’d be better in a claim than most.

Fine will be enforced by the police if they stop you – if you have to produce documents and the photo is out of date they’ll hit you with it!

Will do the same thing if you have moved and not changed address also…

No comment on the Superstar, but if you’re after a cheap post i’ve found my Giant Switch really good.

http://www.pedalon.co.uk/acatalog/giant-switch-seatpost.html#aGC0448

Merlin do them for just under £90, plus an extra 6% off and should be a complete set pre bled with bolts and everything else – check with them but the brakeset I had from them was complete. I just had to shorten and rebleed.

“So import duty and vat on a set of hex keys for about £35 sterling. Half price of crc. I’m close to buying but interested to know what the damage will be”

3.7% duty on top of value, plus VAT on the whole lot. If £35 is half price of CRC you’re going to be paying just under a tenner on top which is still over £20 less than what you’re comparing to.

I’m using a Giant contact switch – not had any problems qith it yet. Not sure how the cable remote lever mechanism will cope with the dusty summer crap but it’s held up fine in freezing and rain.

Also a bargain at £145 from pedalon – I didn’t want to go mad on a reverb and also needed a layback so it’s worked well. A bit more play than i’d have thought there should be in the post but you don’t notice this when riding. Long term not sure as it’s only been on a month or so.

Evans Cylces also doing specialized inner tubes 1/2 price – can’t grumble for £2.50 a tube.

Code 50TUBE at basket.

I used to use A&L then got switched to Santander. Fell out with them over a few different things and their useless service, ended up not using the account for 18 months or so having moved that banking elsewhere.

I then get served with a letter from a debt collection agency asking for several hundred pounds on behalf of Santander… having had no contact from them for 18 months I phoned to ask what the …. was going on.

Turns out they had enforced their ‘may charge £5 for not putting in £500 PCM’ clause on the T&C’s despite not having done this for the 12 months or so previous to this, then slapped each of those fees with an ‘outside agreed overdraft’ fee of £25 each month, and interest on the whole lot. When I asked them exactly how they thought they could do this without a peep to me, I was told that they didn’t send out paper statements and the T&C’s clearly stated that all correspondence would be via the online banking. They pursued me with it and I ended up paying about 1/2 the amount in settlement.

So you can imagine what I think to them!

Rant over…. on a more positive note First Direct are fantastic in my opinion, customer service is the best of any bank i’ve used and it’s backed by HSBC so you still get all the branch facilities. They’ll also give you £££ to switch.

It’ll go up on both policies the OP is insured on though, which over a couple of years could be a few quid and the aggro.

I’d suggest asking your insurance the question – they might be chilled about it as it’s not your vehicle and it’s a low value claim. You can only ask and work out the premium difference to work out if it’s worth it.

If you don’t claim though i’d probably ask yourself if there’s any point paying the 10% extra to protect your NCB.

Try outdoorgb, cheapest when I bought some a few weeks ago.

have a look on ebay for li-ion pcb. There’s plenty on there, I was going to build myself a couple of spare packs just to chuck in my backpack for emergency use – no idea if they are any good or not though.

Use this: http://sheldonbrown.com/gears/

Open it in 2 windows, one for your current setup and one for your proposed setup and see what ratios it gives you.

Bunging in your kit, you’re currently getting 1.4-6.6 as a range of 18 gears, if you went 1×10 with an 11-36 rear cassette and a 32t front you’d get a range of 1.8-5.9. So you’d lose out both ends with that, you could obviously go with smaller or larger front ring to get a lower/higher gear bias.

Bearing in mind you’ll save a bit of weight and won’t have to shift up and down a front cog. If you want to try it out, you can get an idea of the range by working out which gears you won’t have and riding without using them.

Standard 10sp SRAM powerlinks work fine, IMO if you shorten a shimano 10spd chain don’t rejoin it – I had massive problems with the links breaking after I rejoined.

Stuck a powerlink on and it’s fine now – they are hard to get on though so if you struggle getting it to lock, bring the link around to the top of the chain just in front of the cassette, put the brakes on and kick the pedal forwards to lock it. I don’t know if this is common knowledge… but I spent 20mins trying to pull the link together manually trailside before asking one of the techs at the shop who did it in seconds like this!

what kind of portion sizes are you guys doing with this diet? Larger than usual to fill up?

I’m gonna give it a go i could do with shifting a 1/2 stone or so, but my diet generally consists of cereal with milk, coffee with milk, sandwich, crisps, fruit for lunch and pasta or rice for dinner! All off the menu!

I’ve posted on their forum a couple of times looking for people to ride with and never heard anything. The first time I tried to sign up, they didn’t even let me in ;-)

Joking aside I ride Cannock quite a bit and i’m fairly social, drop me an email if you fancy it (in my profile) – especially if you have a set of lights cos i’m after a few night riding buddies cos I get scared easy… rode straight into a pack of deer on the new bit of FTD last night, scared the beejeesus out of me!

Silly thing but if you want to lug with it have you checked the rear seats fold flat? I’m replacing mine and so many of my shortlist dont have fold flat rear seats!

Mondeo does I know, passat and focus on that list don’t quite fold flat – if you put bikes in like me handlebars down to maximise space it means the front forks rub on the headlining on some.

What are you getting into? Do you just climb indoors or do you want to venture outdoors into sport or trad?

If you just climb indoors and have no real desire to go anywhere else, something light and well fitting which gives you a really good range of movement is what you want. You only need a couple of gear loops for dangling a chalkbag, belay and maybe a few clips off.

If you do want to progress more outdoors, then start to look at a heavier harness, with more padding around the rear of the legs, backstrap and crotch. Pay more attention to the comfort of it, how well fitted it is and try it on with clothes on too – something that fits in a pair of thin shorts might not work as well over 3 or 4 layers or when you’re hanging on it for an hour belaying a long pitch. I’ve always used wild country harnesses so would say something like the ziplock sport for indoor and the syncro for more all round use. I use a syncro normally and an old sport harness indoors when I don’t want a load of extra weight.

http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/ these forums might be a good place to look for climbing advice!

backtothetop – Member
Did he change the fork or is it it possible to adjust to 140 from 150? im under the impression that u either buy a 150-120 OR 140-110

Do you want U-turn? If you just get a fixed fork you can pick a number using the spacers, and set it up 130/140/150 fixed travel.

If you want u-turn, i’d probably go 110-140, I did a bit of research on the trance and had a go on one and the general consensus was 140mm was the max the frame would suit. I’d just save a few quid and get a fixed one though, and set it up at 140mm.

Well that changes plans a bit… we are heading out for a couple of weeks but 1st week in June was meant to be the main biking week as most of the group are only doing the first week!

Back to the drawing board methinks….

Might be of no relevance – but….

If you idle the car warmed up, and turn the A/C on – do you get a rough idle and weird noises? I had this and aircon wouldn’t chill. Vaux fixed mine as a recall IIRC on an 07 astra 1.9 CDTI. It was something to do with a screw working loose on the condenser, causing a leak.

Don’t know if yours would be the same.

i’ve got a superstar multi tool which has worked far better and lasted longer than previous decent stand alone chain tools. Can’t grumble @ £17 for the lot.

As far as chain length goes I just work on length required to go round both big wheels and add 2 links. In your case add 2 then remove the last outer section and bang on the powerlink.

I saw this thread earlier – then when looking at a few bits on rose this popped up:

http://www.rosebikes.co.uk/article/rose-transport-set-xl/aid:294890

Not sure if it’s what you’re after but it’s a bit cheaper than most hardcases i’ve seen so I thought i’d stick it on a post incase.

Seeing as you mention IR35 you probably already know about the legalities of ’employed contracting’. Something you really don’t want to get involved in – I know of people who have fallen foul of these new regulations, if you are thinking of simply contracting out to one company where you could legitimately be paid via PAYE i’d be careful. I made the switch back to PAYE a few years ago to avoid this.

Really? Looking online they show as no offset. I’ve got a layback post currently and the saddle is as far back as it can go – which makes me think the reverb might not be suitable.

Worked the length I need out though thanks – current post is 380mm but i’ve cut it a touch short really, considering i’d gain 40mm extra travel downwards as the 125mm drop is more than the 80mm manual travel on the stumpy, the 420mm reverb seems the obvious choice.

I’ve just done a similar thing, built a stumpjumper up with a frame, a new fork and donated everything off my couple of years old hardrock.

Since been buying better bits to replace what I stole from the donor bike, I think currently i’m upto about £1300 in total, only thing left to replace is the handlebars. Closest thing specialized do for 2012 would be a £2000 camber – but the camber wasn’t what quite what I wanted so i’ve built exactly what I was after.

I’m taking a company car shortly so worked out mine the other night to see how beneficial it would be – I guessed my car cost me a couple of hundred a month or so. Was a bit shocked when I worked out it was £360 a month – and that includes a business mileage allowance of about £2-3K a year. 16K miles a year gives 27p a mile.

Worst is the insurance – despite being 26, driving for 9 years (+1 on a motorbike @ 16) having never had a single point, claim or anything and full NCB for those 9 years, i’m paying £1400 a year on a 5 year old car now worth about £4K. Insurance is more per year than depreciation!

Do you want one? If so get one! I have 2, My main player is an ibanez ew2012. Cracking guitar with a great sound plugged or unplugged. It’s probably my favourite guitar and looks fantastic too. My only gripe with it is I wanted the matching 6 string but it just didn’t play as well for me to complete the set :-(

Got all my drivetrain bits from actionsports.de – loads cheaper than anything I could find in the UK.

http://www.actionsports.de/gb/Components/Shifters:::7_30.html

Frame I bought on here and then built up – a couple of things have been finished since this pic was taken, now sporting a non ball busting steerer :-)