Magic Mary front, with Rock Razor (dry conditions), or Hans Dampf (wet conditions) rear (is all you will ever need)*.

The ridiculous names in big letters instantly make you 167% more rad.

You can thank me later.
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*In the STW tradition of recommending ;)

Dissappearing down the rabbit hole that is slide / neg scanning… ooh!

For home scanning, as an absolute minimum, you will need one of these:

https://plustek.com/us/products/film-photo-scanners/opticfilm-8200i-se/index.php

You can get hold of one for around £300-400. This scanner (I have one) will provide sharpness and resoultion very close to that of a professional lab (I still shoot film, so know what a good professional lab scan looks like). Any cheaper scanner than this will produce very poor quality scans

There are a few caveats though

* Each high resolution scan will take around 60-90 seconds, depending on the speed of your PC. You will need to scan in RAW format, not jpeg.

* You also need to add in slide / negative handling time, dust blowing etc. – this is not inconsiderable, just aligning the slides / negs pefectly in the carrier is sometimes a bit of a faff. For me to scan a roll of 36 images takes around 45 mins. It gets tedious really quickly.

* You need to import the image files into photo editing software of your choice – don’t even bother using the native ‘Silverfast’ software these scanners come bundled with to edit the images – it’s crap. So you will also need a subscription to Lightroom, or something similar.

* You will then need to crop and rotate the images – they are never perfectly aligned in the scanner – then you need to edit the image files so that they actually look good, which takes a bit of practice and skill. The images straight out of the scanner always look rubbish, unfortunately.

* In the case of negatives, you will also need to purchase a plug-in for Lightroom – such as Negative Lab Pro – that allows you to ‘invert’ the negative image to a positive. Again, the native bundled Silverfast scanner software is rubbish for this. Once you have inverted the image, it will need further careful image processing (white balance, shaprening, contrast, brightness, highlights, shadows, dust removal, etc. etc.) to make it look okay

* In the case of slides, these will also need careful editing in Lightroom to make them look okay. Slide scans (due to their inherently high image contrast) are really inflexible for processing, which makes this part quite a delicate art.

I easily spend another 1 hr + editing a roll of 36 images, so you are probably looking at 2 hours of faff per film roll.

In short, you could get really frustrated and practically lose the will to live at any stage during this process. It is a bit of a rabbit hole.

Only advice I can offer, which my Doc provided, is cut out alchohol, entirely. Alchohol is surprisingly bad for the heart and just 1 drink a week can increase risk of arythmias.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405500X22009379#:~:text=These%20data%20suggest%20that%20even,or%20binge%20consumption%20is%20required.

I have exercise-induced paroxymal AF and luckily so far, only one serious episode, so YMMV.

Despite beeing into mountain biking for over 30 years and actually living in Rotorua, even I am unclear as to what ‘slopestyle’ actually is, or what goes on at CrankWorx. Initally when we first got here, I thought it might be some sort of enduro race. I still haven’t got round to going to the event in the 5 years I’ve lived here, even though we can get local resident mates rates tickets.

A niche-within-a-niche indeed.

The organisers should probably have just let the riders eat at the buffet.

Just. No.

This:

if I was a.. mountain bike journo riding everyday

It’s what orginally frustrated me about ST reviews – and still does TBH. A magazine with fantastic potential, but in reviews and other areas – their approach sees mountain biking through a very narrow lens, one I doubt many riders en masse can generally relate to.

I haven’t even seen a nettle or bramble while riding for the last 5 years, since I moved to NZ. Anyone with these on their bike would simply get laughed at here. There are many other parts of the world where nettles and brambles aren’t a problem. To be honest, having ridden much of the UK for 30 years, there are plently of parts of the UK where nettles and brambles are not really too much of an issue.

This is a very ugly solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Unless you happen to be a bike journo living in Calderdale.

Leaving for a pre-arranged family lunch and not staying in bed with EY on a Sunday morning, until her mum left the house, as she wanted me to.

Deciding I definitely had to head off as usual to the boldering wall one Wednesday night when EG wanted me to stay over at her house, while her fiancée was away.

Not picking up on the fact, until many years later, that SM was the girl who sent me a Valentines card when we both worked in the same small office room together.

I’m sure there are a few others. I just don’t seem to be able to pick up on the signals… 🤦‍♂️

I am a serial bike horder. I have a sizable collection of 11 bikes from different eras of mountain biking and they all get ridden, from a 1996 Giant MCM Team hardtail, to to a 2019 Yeti SB5 Lunch Ride with 170mm forks. They all get taken out on the world class trails here in Rotorua.

Out of all this, there doesn’t seem to be one bike that is clearly ‘better’ overall. They just ride diferently. I ride the same trails over and over again and have subtly different experiences with each bike. Some days it’s nice to take out my 2007 Giant Trance Advanced with 115mm rear travel and its >70 degree head angle, others it’s great to be on my 2012 Orange Five, with 160mm forks and a slacker head tube angle. (I actually have no idea what the head angles on my bikes even are)

The funny thing is, no one bike is particularly faster than any of the others. We have a very fast 8 minute descent here and according to GPS, my 2012 Yeti ASR5c was within 10 seconds of the time of my 2019 SB5 with carbon 27.5 wheels, both within 50 seconds of the all time fastest segment time on Strava. And which bike was I having more fun on? I coudn’t honestly say. Each bike just offers a different experience.

My two pence worth is that I woudn’t get too hung up on which bike you ‘need’, or get too hung up on headtube angles, or which bike you think will make you faster or enjoy the trail more. In my experience, none of this really seems to matter all that much.

My second piece of advice is, never sell any bike that you like riding, ever.

The trouble with terns is the wingspan is slightly too small and their load carrying suffers. Otherwise, they are lovely birds and can tolerate quite a varied diet.

I live in an antipodean house with an ASHP? (a what???) – a ‘heat pump’ I think you mean – and a ‘mechanical ventilation heat recovery system’??? wow! you Britishers and your funny verbose terms*. I think you mean a ‘DVS’ system, as we call them here.

These systems are pretty much standard for all Kiwi houses. In a typically poorly insulated antipodean house, a heat pump barely provides enough heating for the house. It’s noisy relative to the quiet cosy ‘glugging’ of a UK central heating system. And it blows air in your face, which is not very restful. And, unless you are very rich, there’s generally only one of them to heat the entire house. Ours is in the living room. The living room is warm and windy. The rest of the house is cold.

The DVS ventilation system is absolutely essential in a typical poorly insulated antipodean house, otherwise mould will be quite literally climbing the walls. The ventilation system makes the house colder than it should be in the winter and warmer than it needs to be on a baking hot summer day. At some point, during middling spring or autumn outside temperatures, it works well at driving warm air in from the roof to moderate the house temperature during the day and night, while providing an endless stream of fresh air that mould won’t tolerate.

Underfloor heating would be some sort of dreamlike fantasy. I could see that possibly providing the requisite level of cosiness in a bespoke designed, well insulated house. It would probably overcome some of the vast shortcomings of a heat pump, anyway.

* I’m from the UK, originally.

IIRC on an old camera increasing the apature size would do that, how to achieve on my phone camera?

It’s not possible to blur the background on a smartphone by opening the aperture because the sensor size in a phone is actually somewhat less than the size of a fingernail.

This small sensor means that to produce a ‘normal’ looking focal length image like the one above – a 4mm focal length lens is actually used. On a ‘full frame’ 35mm camera, this would be insanely wide-angle. The very small sensor in a phone, however, renders an image that is in effect a very extreme crop of the ultra-wide-angle image you would obtain using a 4mm lens on an 35mm ‘old camera’ with a 24×36 mm sensor plane. Here, it looks ‘normal’ on the tiny fingernail phone sensor.

Sadly, it is virtually impossible to blur out the background in a shot like this made with a 4mm lens – unless you somehow could make a lens with an aperture width many times greater than the focal length itself.

Hence, selective blurring software is now used to implement this effect quite successfully in phone – albeit artificially.

*Probably too much detail here than anyone needed 😂 *

The winner of the worlds has the same model Oakleys as me, in exactly the same colourway. I feel awesome 😎

I would without fail always get two wasp stings at different occasions under the, erm, helmet every late summer / autumn when living in the UK and out on the road bike. It was always two stings for some reason, never more, never less.

With me, I found the process was always to frantically slow down and stop the bike, carefully remove Oakleys (which were over the helmet straps, naturally), take off helmet and frantically extract said wasp, squashing it between gloved fingers.

These annual stings didn’t bother me too much in the end. I find with wasp stings, they hurt a great deal for a few minutes, but ignore it for a bit, and the pain goes away. This sensation is eventually replaced by puffy plasticene-like skin, which becomes somewhat pleasingly itchy after 12 hours or so.

Not much wild fruit and (drunk) late-summer wasps here in NZ, so don’t have this problem anymore.

Wash in washing machine – using liquid dishwashing detergent only.

Re-proof, left in sink overnight with Nikwax re-proofer, agitate occasionally.

Rinse.

I had a pristine second-hand 2003 Cooper in silver (R50 version) which I lovingly kept from 2013 until 2019. I loved that car more than any car ever, ever, ever. It still pains me that it is no longer with me. Amazing go-kart handling loads of steering feedback, punchy engine. Lovely driving position. It just felt special every time I got in to drive it. It wasn’t any ‘car’, it felt like getting in a Mini. Hard to explain unless you have experienced it.

In terms of long distance driving, I loved it. It was definitely not a limousine, but drove it up to Scotland and back, with an Orange Five in the back quite happily. People complain about the ‘rigid’ feel of the Runflat tyres, but to be honest, I actually quite liked the firm direct overall feel the car had.

No massive reliability problems, so to speak of. Oh, except the front wheel bearing needed replacing immediately after I bought it (on my test drive I thought Minis were supposed to make a ‘growling’ noise driving along 😂). Then shortly after the radiator boiled over, owing to a leak in the cooling system. Amazingly, I managed to fix this by chucking a bottle of Radweld into the cooling system, which seemed to fix the leak and it was never a problem again in the 5 years I drove it.

Then, around the 135k mark, the alternator shat itself on the M27 miles from home, a few months later this followed by the gearbox and clutch packing up on the M6 toll again miles from home, then just before its final MOT the central ABS pump unit thingy packed in. Because I was so irrationally in love with the thing, I kept chucking money at it, until moving for a job overseas meant the relationship was over. Sold it on eBay with no MOT for about £800, which wasn’t bad after 6 years, buying it for £3,300.

So, great car, potentially a labour of love if things go wrong, which they have the potential to do with the first R50 version. No idea what the new ones are like, but they are probably a hell of a lot better.

I now drive a ’08 Honda Jazz, which is a great car. It’s almost boringly reliable and economical. It feels about as special and engaging to drive as a Hoover. I am, however, no longer irrationally in love with my car.

There was no option for **cyclocross bikes**, which I have two of and are my main ‘road’ bikes, but also get used off road.

Just say no to this gravel bike nonsense.

There was previously no option for ‘none’ under which of the following bikes do you ride more than once a week, but I see it is there now. Shame I’ve already done the survey.

I rarely go mountain biking more than once a week, because I find mountain biking really quite boring more than once a week. Same with road biking, I also find that quite tedious more than once a week, ha-ha, so it’s once a week max on any bike for me. Not a problem when I have 10 bikes to choose from. Multiple different sports activites each week for-the-win and absolutely no boredom, everytime, however!

This place is becoming a more like Tattle.life or Mumsnet, each week.

It feels like a Komodo Dragon eating the underside of your foot.

Real men ride with LOUD hubs, init.

Ag Photographic + Photolab, based in Birminham in my experience are the absolute best anywhere in the UK when it comes to scanning film. They run a film scanning service linked below.

https://www.ag-photolab.co.uk/product-category/film-scans/

It shouldn’t make any difference whether you are scanning slides, or negatives. If anything, slides are slightly easier to scan. If you are going for a large print I would recommend selecting the ‘Noritsu Large Scans of Individual Frames’ option, which is £3.69. You’d just have to pay postage to get them there and return postage, which is £4.94 on top of this.

The scans, which will be delivered to you on CD-ROM should come back looking very good. However, if there are any scratches or marks visible – these can easily be removed using ‘healing tool’ in the free Snapseed photoediting app, available for Android, or IOS.

35mm slide film has very high resolving power and should easily be able to produce a really good 12×8 print.

Home scanning of slides and film is also a viable (but quite costly!) option. I have a Plustek Opticfilm 8100

https://www.filmscanner.info/en/PlustekOpticFilm8100.html

Which was about £200 used from eBay. It gives me really shar, clean 18 MP scans of my negatives. See an example of mine below:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/154248583@N08/52823410971/in/dateposted-public/

Unfortunately, for this you’ll also need a Lightroom software subscription + buy the Negative Lab Pro plugin, whic adds up the costs somewhat for a few scans! 😂

I gave up about 2 years ago. Went completely cold turkey – from around 6 cups of very strong coffee per day – to nothing, no caffeine whatsoever. The withdrawal symptoms were horrific. Mind-bending splitting headaches for the first week, total inability to focus or do anything and searing pain from my legs when cycling or running uphill for the first three weeks. I was almost about to cave in at that point and give up, giving up. After three weeks, however, these withdrawal symptoms went away.

Unfortunately, having given up all caffeine and got back to being ‘normal’, there were very few real long-term benefits I could see to be honest. I stuck at this zero caffeine thing for at least 6 months and found that during that time I couldn’t focus when I needed too and felt sleepy occasionally throughout the day. I found no noticeable improvements in my sleeping either.

Since then, I have gradually allowed myself a caffeinated Coke Zero in the afternoons at work. This was followed by ‘allowing’ a coffee out on Saturdays. Recently, Mrs no_eyed_deer bought a coffee grinder for home and so I ‘allowed’ myself a coffee at home on Sundays. Then, last week I went down with ‘flu and was bedridden at home, so I was having two massively strong cups of coffee to try and feel a bit better each morning. Oddly, drinking this massively strong coffee with the ‘flu had absolutely no effect on me – I still felt exhausted and like shite.

I’ve cut straight back to coffee at the weekend only now. I think for me, it’s okay as long as I’m not drinking it most days of the week. I can definitely see a dependence thing that develops with caffeine, which I want to stay away from. I also seem to enjoy it a lot more as an occasional treat – if I have periods of abstinence each week.

“Started to swim in the sea a couple of weeks ago and love it even more, I can just keep going not fast but I find it quite meditative.”

Yeah.. it’s great isn’t it! I swim 2.5 km outdoors every week all year round now, as I really can’t stand pools, people and chlorine.

From my experience (I’ve also taken up surfing since moving out here), you probably won’t find 4km all that difficult with a little regular training. My single weekly swim was easily enough to get me round a full 5km lap of the local volcanic crater lake here in Rotovegas, one afternoon when I just felt like doing it. This was 1 3/4 – 2 hrs swimming, no need for feed stops or drinking, just plod along and watch the scenery go by. If you can manage a 2 hr gentle bike ride without food, you should be okay swimming for 2 hours.

In so far as needing a wetsuit. I suspect you’d probably be just about okay in September without one.

11k people have watched me running and changing gear on my Honda Bros 650.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSnc_UeMwHI

Arrrghh! How do you embed videos on this thingy?

Had mine plated in 2006. The skin around the surgery area is still numb from nerve damage. I still get the odd twinge from the plate, especially if I try to lift something really heavy. Like, for example, attempting to bicep-curl a person off the floor*.

I think it was a bit more twingey for a few years after the surgery. Things sort of settled down after that. I guess everyone is different, but from my experience you could be looking at 3-4 years before things truly settle down and you know what you are living with long term.

* Drunk in a pub, seemed like a good idea.

Nope. I’m a hyper-competitive mentalist, so racing really stresses me out.

I could never do a race in the past without giving absolutely 110% and completely destroying myself. I was seen apparently turning ‘grey’ as I crossed a finish line once – while my vision was fading in on itself like a tunnel. I used to race as a junior and was pretty good at it, regularly placing top five and was selected to represent my county multiple times in the cross-country (running) Nationals.

At some point, however, I simply realised I just wasn’t enjoying any of it at all. There’s some weird peer pressure or group expectation thing – that if you are I really committed to being good at something – then of course you absolutely have to race. I just realised I enjoyed the training – on my own – so that’s what I kept up with.

Fast forward 25 years or so and in my 40s I now have paroximal atrial fibrulation, so any form of high-intensity exercise is pretty much off the cards . I pootle about the place somewhat slower than I used to and find I actually enjoy my running and cycling a lot more now.

I short, I don’t actually believe racing is all that healthy (nor the competitive mindset that goes with it).

Or “Expensive and ultimately pointless” – as someone above quite brilliantly put it 😂

I’m still using Mono M4 from 2008 on my Orange Five. They are brilliant, even compared to the modern XTR four pots on my Yeti.

Oh, and 2011 Formula R1 on my Giant Trance that have never once needed to bleed in 12 years.

My experience of bike shops completely changed infinitely for the better when I moved out here to NZ, where here bike shops are invariably friendly, helpful and somewhat radically – put the customer first – always.

In the UK, this approach seems to be completely alien, so I previously avoided bike shops like the plague. Inevitably the UK bike shop experience would involve being talked down to (as if I was a complete ignorant twunt) in a surly condescending way by someone who probably wasn’t even born by the time I started mountain biking.

Here in NZ, for example, I hand over a box of new bits that I want fitted to my bike – and they cheerfully fit them. No questions, no hassle, no condescension. They will trouble shoot any problems if they arise and cheerfully let me know possible solutions. They are always quick, professional and do a great job.

The only downside is that I’ve now become completely lazy about doing my own maintenance and fixing, whereas I used to do absolutely everything myself.

You lot are really weird.

@dyna-ti this thread was pretty grim reading, but I am dying now reading that 😂

I had no idea anyone could need a hip repalcement in their 40s… jeez

middle class pseudo-socialist hypocritical tts, who can’t even wheelie

Jeez.. I fear this describes me to a T 😂

Easy. The 210 or so miles I rode one July from Oxford to Bude in one day. Left in the dark at 4:30am or something, arrived on the beach in Cornwall at sunset, in the rain. It was epic. The weird thing was arriving at the B&B and virtually being able to replay the whole ride back in my mind, remembering every corner, hill and junction over 200 miles of windy lanes and A-roads between Oxford and Bude. It really did seem like quite a long way…

Never done anything like it since, nor will I ever again.

Thank you all for the brilliant replies! Still just as confused as ever, but at least I have a lot more ‘real user’ information to go on now. It seems that some of my doubts might be well-founded, but there appears to be a fair bit to recommend this country.

I’ll probably have just to go for it and anyway stop feeling unsure.

It bugs me that the SA still remains the one continent I’ve yet to get to (apart from that big icy one) and it’s completely unknown to me, so I guess I’ve got to scratch that itch. Interestingly, Ecuador was also strongly recommended to me a by someone few years back, so perhaps I need to closely investigate that as an option too.

I’ve been to a few weddings over the years. I’ve never felt much need to compare them. Some were better than others, I suppose.

I expect you know this already, but.. Apparently, you need anything that is very, very long. I’m around your size most probably (5′ 11″) and I believe the surf school hired me something foamy that was around 10 ft. An absolute monstrosity of a thing.

I though this would be thread about monocles. I am dissapointed.

Er… well, if you click on the photo up comes a tab saying “Hippo Fly copy”, so I’m guessing it must be a hippo fly! 😂

those horrid old fashioned ones that lay vertically on your bars

For those of us (or is it only me?) still running 3 x, these dropper remotes work just perfectly, thanks. In fact, I’m hoarding them now because they’re so hard to come by.

everyone except Riker and Pickard have aged rather badly

Ahem… Seven of Nine / Jeri Ryan, ahem… 😍😍😍

I live here. So proabably well-placed to add yet more confusing information to the cascade of recommendations above. Having said that, what’s written so far seems pretty reasonable. It depends on what you are looking for really. If you’ve only got a few weeks, then it will probably be best to hit the obvious well-known ‘big ticket’ items.

If you are starting in Auckland – travel distances are quite large overall – think northern tip of Denmark to the top of Morocco, so unless you will be flying around the country, a significant chunk of your 3 weeks could be spent driving.

If you want to do some day hikes / short tramps, South Island will be generally best. Queenstown area is good, as is Wanaka, Mount Aspiring area. Mt Cook area is pretty good for some spectacular day hikes, with glaciers. We are heading into Autumn now, so it will be getting a bit chilly down south. Whether that suits you for hiking / tramping is up to you.

Milford Sound / Doubtful Sound area is magnificient, the weather can be crap – but that just adds to the atmosphere.

Being a Rotorua resident, I have to speak to my biases here. The Bay of Plenty area is amazing, lovely sub-tropical climate, great beaches, chilled out vibe. It will also be a great deal warmer and sunnier here than the South over the next month or so. There are few big ticket items in BoP, but it’s worth exploring if you have the time and inclination to just experience aspects of Kiwi life and the environment / lifestyle. Rotorua itself, however, is great for amazing mountain biking – 160 km of bespoke MTB trails, plus decent bike hire shops aplenty. I would really recommend hiring an e-MTB, just to be able to easily climb up to some of the Epic long flowy descents – Split Endz and Eagle vs Shark are absolute classics, but they take me over an hour to climb up to on my pedal bike.

Then, of course there is all the amazing geothermal stuff around here, geysers, mud pools, Waimangu geothermal area, Rainbow Mountain, Kereosene Creek – a ‘bath temperature’ flowing waterfall you can swim in, Wai-o-Tapu geothermal area. Plus cool Māori cultural stuff. Whakarewarea (Māori) Village is probably the best one to visit – if you want to combine both geothermal stuff and a Māori cultural experience, plus a geothermally cooked hāngī.

A few more ideas to confuse you futher.

From my very scary experience of a Ti pedal axle snapping I wouldn’t go anywhere near them TBH.

I got hold of a pair of Crank Bros eggbeater pedals with sexy gold aftermarket far-eastern ti axles fitted. On my first ride using them, the right pedal axle snapped with no warning whatsoever. Very fortunately for me, it only snapped when I started pedaling on the gravel AWAY from the bottom of the really fast, really rocky final descent at Afan. To this day, it scares me shiteless what would have happened if it’d let go during the descent. I probably wouldn’t have a face anymore.

I wouldn’t use ti in any critical single-point-of failure application again, especially not that cheap far eastern stuff.

That’s 21 w/kg!

Better let the folks at the 4 w/kg thread know that they no longer need to bother obsessvely emaciating themselves.