Option 1: Scare him with legal jargon into buying you a new swingarm or refunding (lie if you have to, at this point it’s the lesser of two evils and a liars only as good as his lie.) Tell him you are taking him to court and that a legal rep will contact him at his address if he doesn’t deal with you directly. Tell him, (and sound confident) that if taken to court he will inevitably lose because he has broken the law by falsely advertising the item and has agreed to a legal contract in selling the bike. Tell him also that it is easier, and cheaper for him if the issue is dealt with out of court. Don’t push your luck and be unreasonable, but get back what you lost. Don’t expect any more than that or you will come away with nothing.

Option 2: Go to the bank and say you’ve been scammed, get them to reverse the money.

Option 3: What scaredypants said. Do you have any mates who play rugby/who are rowers? Don’t use spindly little road cycling pushovers. Turn up at his house with a gaggle of mates waiting near the car (visible but not on his property), with the bike – put the bike in front of him so he knows you’re not mugging him and DEMAND your money back on the spot. Tell him you aren’t leaving until he does it, and be firm and confident until he says he’s calling the police. This could be the coup de gras – take proof of being ripped off, tell your mates to back off and wait for the police. Show them the evidence, be VERY POLITE and pleasant, show them proof of purchase, payment, the photos and the broken bike and they will likely tell him to pay you back within x days or they will write up a court summons. With this combination he will probably say OK ill go get the money out of the bank. Go with him and get it.

Option 4: Failing the above, and with all legal avenues tried, smear the shit out of the prick. Find out where he works, what his name is, and make sure he’s the most hated person on the bike forums if just for a day. Might stop him from doing it again.

I commute in london and always nod/smile at virtually every cyclist I see, but sometimes I’m put off by certain people who I just know will not return the favor, so I save myself the embarrassment of nodding to a brick wall.

I’ve been friends with her for 13 years

no chance in hell

Lol nukeproof riding as opposed to the iPhone 5 that could run other software

stay with os5 :p sorry for being off topic.

So whats the general consensus on the nexus 7? im considering buying one, but am used to apple products – is it going to disappoint me?

iPhone 5 that I’ve had endless problems with crashing

IOS6 probably the culprit.

Unless one of your mates lays driveways for a living, sounds like you ought to have at least someone who does helping out. Not saying you will, but it’s possible to make a total pigs ear out of a driveway and you will waste a crap load of money and time. 😀

Much much much better! Don’t like the dark though. Make it a light neutral colour!

For that reason, I’d hire you.

Unfortunately that’s not how clients see it. They know a good website when they see one and they expect a photographer to understand and appreciate that too. It’s your image online, and as the old saying goes first impressions are important, a website is no different.

Now work on tinkering with the layout a little, and improving fonts etc. I think you would benefit from a menu and some more pages for the different types of work you do.

Keep going! 🙂 Seriously though, that is so much better than the old one haha, that’s a really impressive improvement. It took you what? 5 hours max? Think what it will be like if you spend a few days on it. Good man for taking everyones advice without taking it to heart as well.

We have a saying at work – kill your darlings. (design darlings not members of the family :p) because 9 times out of 10 any emotional attachment distorts your perspective and stops you from making the decisions/changes you need to make.

The best value ear/headphones by a country mile are sound magic’s E10s. You’d need to spend >£100 to get anything better

You get better sound quality from over ear headphones for less than those.

The Geometry on the Gt Fury Alloy that came out this year is not identical to any of the old models.

The GT team using the carbon Fury have the old geometry – they use angle headsets and offset shock bushings to achieve the revised geometry.

The new GT Fury Alloy has a 63.5 headangle as opposed to the original 65 degrees. The BB is lower. Top tube and chainstays are shorter.

Yeah I heard they’re working on a new bike too. But as above, i’ve been told categorically, a number of times by different people that the geometry on the Fury Alloy is not the same.

I got the molgrips on it, and it twisted off too!

I’d go to the hospital just to check you aren’t turning into the hulk. Never heard of someone ripping parts of a bolt off with molgrips lol You sure they didn’t make the bolts out of cheese and spray them silver?

Yeah, sorry I should have guessed you meant the Pulse. Probably great value as well, but you probably wouldn’t get your hands on one until march or april next year, and even then, they aren’t tried and tested by the general public. Remember the evil revolt launch? Great reviews from everyone – production frame came out and everyone’s swing arm bearings and bushings were destroyed within a month or so with twisted swing arms and all that jazz. So scalp is the safe bet, but the pulse will probably be a stunner.

The new fury was launched this year. They’re called the GT Fury Alloy 1.0 And the GT Alloy 2.0 which is black with better components – Thess have all new frame and Geometry, whereas the renewed Carbon versions like Gee Atherton’s share many of the previous model Fury’s geometry but is lighter and slacker?

If you’re really bothered about value for money… buy a laptop case and screen 2nd hand, and buy the best parts you can. Bit of effort but you end up with insane value for money.

i stopped on new year’s day, 1988.
if i hadn’t, i’d be dead by now.

Props to you.

I sometimes wander if we’ll look back in 20 to 30 years and think the same way about booze as most people do now about smoking. Jesus H! people really did that to themselves? They paid through the nose for a substance that damages them.

Yep. Useless pieces of utter dog crap. Made by Monster Cable Products who ship most of their garbage in from taiwan anyway. My £50 phillips over ear headphones sound better, and IMO you look like a douche wearing them.

The word Douche literally appears in my head every time I see some sucker wearing them.

I drink when I go out with friends. That is it. I have no intention of making booze necessary for having a nice relaxing evening at home though. I just don’t see the point. Biking is my booze :p

Piedi, funny as that sounds, it’s something I will definitely check. We have had absolutely howling wind around here lately so I will check to make sure something hasn’t unplugged itself or broken.

Cougar is that something that I can do or is professional kit needed?

The aerial our main tv uses is on the roof on an extension, so not too difficult to reach with a ladder, just not been up there yet.

The tv in our spare room upstairs uses an aerial built into the roof because the house is grade 2 listed so nothing can go on the main roof. This aerial works fine but we can’t use it for the downstairs tv because it’s just too far away and we also can’t just drill holes in the floor like we could in our old house without alot of expensive prep work.

this site has the right idea

Agreed. The spacing between the menu, the content and the information at the bottom made me want to vomit though lol :p

I’d use smugmug as an extension of the website and a way of channeling more users to the site, rather than pretending it’s a website – it’s not. It’s a photo sharing, social platform. Use it with all your other promotional accompaniments, flickr, facebook, twitter etc.

But I don’t think it gives the impression you want to give to your clients. But like Leffeboy says – it all depends on what you want to do.

Don’t forget that netobjects fusion can do SEO and lot’s of other plugin stuff too, you don’t have to use smugmug for that. I’d argue that smugmug is very much aimed at hobbyists, and thus gives that image.

The gt fury is about 5 years old now!
The scalp has just been replaced.

There is a new fury – why would the athertons be riding a 5 year old bike? lol. And the scalp has not been replaced, it has been re-stickered because people hated the graphics on the 2012 model.

Back end on the DHR is one of the worst I’ve tried 🙁

Wilson yes.

303wc yes.

Makulu yes. All good suggestions, but I’d avoid the DHR *personally*

I ride to and from my side gate after night rides – probably spotted on my Zesty. Bad vibes!

Yep 🙁 happens everywhere. Buy a loud dog, put them indoors out of view from windows and use deadlock bolts on all your doors. Key locks, no matter how expensive, can be broken/picked easily. Lol I must be sounding like a right old paranoid now, but what the heck. Never had any of my bikes stolen in my life so I must have been doing something right.

Scalp just seems such a perfect match for what you’ve described. Doesn’t need to be the CCDB. In fact I’d suggest you go with the stock vivid, but upgrade the spring.

The scalp frame is a work of art for the price, the linkage is the best i’ve ever tried, it’s planted, it’s maneuverable, it’s fun and confidence building.

The CCDB is hard to set up and unforgiving if set up incorrectly, if anything goes wrong with it you’re buggered too because the internals aren’t exactly user friendly.

Something that rides brilliantly and is good value is never uncommon is it? You either buy something uncommon that fills a niche with particular riding style, i.e. the zerode or a gambler or something but lose out on the dh performance. What you’re asking for – fairly cheap, very fast AND unusual is pretty much an impossible task unless you buy 2nd hand, but you want an immaculate frame, so you have to compromise somewhere.

Having said that – K9 are very good frames, and are uncommon. They are expensive though. Or get a custom built Katipo – but they weigh a tonne and you have to wait ages.

A lot of the aston lads ride K9’s as they were tested there – and they are very, very fast if used right. http://www.k9industries.com/

Then of course v10’s are stunning frames, but expensive.

Then theres the mondraker summum which is again very good, but very slack and probably more suited to the flat out bike parks than technical british trails.

Lapierre as well. Con is expense.

Or the new gt bikes which the athertons are rocking.

Being impatient, I would drill it, and get a bolt extraction piece for the size of the bolt? Or just take the brake off and send it off if you aren’t in a rush.

In the man draw. Along with my old mobiles, drachma, sim cards and manuals. Just in case I get the call.

Proper thieves either steal to order or some of it will go abroad. Doesn’t sound like the average chav attack – especially with the enclosed garden and decent locks. Were you away when they got nicked?

Keep them indoors. It’s the only safe way really. Bikes still get nicked with ground anchors – take nigel page’s CRC team bikes for example. All individually locked inside a secured garage with gold standard d locks, all locked to an enormous ground anchor set in 2 or 3 feet of hardened concrete. Still all of them got nicked. Twice. At the end of the day, thieves won’t break into houses to steal bikes, because they aren’t worth the increased risk of being caught / having the blue beaten out of them with a baseball bat.

Are there dodgy people near you who knew you had a nice collection of bikes in a shed? Call me paranoid but I don’t tell anyone but my closest mates… and I never ride them near my house on the street.

Sorry for your loss.

As in netobjects fusion?

If I was in your shoes – I’d start a v2. Do you have photoshop? If not, print a screenshot out of your current site – all the pages, and go to pen and paper.

Drawing skill means 0 in this case so don’t worry about how good it looks, but mess around with layouts.

Look around at what everyone else is doing as well, because whilst you want something individual, you need to know what the pro’s are doing – because they understand what works for your target audience. Have a look at the smashing web design site for some ideas.

As a basic rule of thumb, I would advise that for the home page, you go like this:

logo/site title center or left aligned.
—————————————
<break>
—————————————
Menu – aligned to match logo – nice spacing between letters and words
—————————————
Revolving image gallery (auto plays)(large – 800 wide minimum)
—————————————
Grid of 3 across x 2 down of images with links and captions.
—————————————
Second navigation menu at the bottom with Terms, Contact, About

Ditch the background image, but that list above is how an effective photo portfolio site is stacked in modern websites. It’s effective, clean and coherent. On the menu you want to keep your sections for different types of photography, and when people go to those pages, you want clickable, zoomable, high quality images and enough of them, laid out in a beautiful grid with appropriate margins. You also want some blurb about that section of photos, but this is secondary to the images, so don’t let it interrupt the grid.

Do those for all and you have a great base onto which you can apply your subtle personal choices in colour, font use etc.

You can use an image for the background, or a neutral coloured texture. If you are using an image, don’t cover the entire website – do half, either the top to provide some contrast for your logo / title to go over the top of, or at the bottom to provide a line beneath which the grid begins. Use a subtle image, but dark images can be used with a transparency to create a nice texture that does not distract from the images.

At least that is how I would go about designing your site If I was working on it today 🙂

Keep it clean, the beauty should be in the detail, and a careful approach to choosing margins, fonts and a very subtle use of colour – because your photography is doing the talking, the website’s just delivering the message.

Edit: keep catching photons, but use a sub title like you have – commercial photography by Ben Cooper. Catching Photons is a brilliant domain, and one you shouldn’t let go of.

Any news?

have you been on mars for the last 10 years? This has been happening pretty much since the dawn of the supermarket… And shops now rely on it.

Yep linux mint is spot on for lumbering pc’s. Although if your laptop is simply struggling to deal with all the software you are running, linux will only temporarily delay the inevitable. You could spend a bit of money on it and upgrade to linux and you would be set. (ram, processor etc.?)

I’d agree with butcher. The images are really great. The website is not. I’m not saying this just for the sake of being nasty but it is really really lacking in pretty much every area.

I’d say start by looking at what is out there – by looking at popular sites you can see tried and tested solutions to varying design problems in web building.

What was it built using? The green is nauseous and doesn’t match the photographs. Everything is left aligned with a large patch of nothing on the right – very odd – people will think the site is broken. The photos on some of the pages are stretched. Not enough photos on the site, and they are presented badly – cannot full screen or zoom them etc.

Again ill reinforce my opening sentence by saying that as harsh as this may sound, it’s purely because I know you can improve this site loads, and just remember that you are designing a site to promote your photos – you are not building a site to be a work of art in itself, it has to be functional and simple, but in a style that shows you know what’s what.

unfortunately, at the moment it looks like a site from the mid 90’s and isn’t going to impress clients or photography fans.

I’d reassess how you are building the site and why. Did you use html and apache? Or was it an online site builder? Give me some more info and I can give you some more specific advice 🙂

I’m in the same position atm but for my self. I have had consistently bad experiences with android on a number of devices and just have this feeling that the nexus 7 will only last a few months before becoming horribly slow, clunky and the UI will just annoy me constantly.

Anyone else had good experiences with the ipad mini? (sorry to somewhat hijack thread OP)

Keep it that way.

Who the **** are you to tell him he can’t post his opinion? The bloody STW mafia? Not to mention the fact he was talking specifically about con artist cold calls, of which there are many. He never said “everyone who works in a call centre is a kitten murderer did he?” fs. So sick of all you STW ‘old boys’ going wolf pack on peoples backside for having an opinion.

ring your insurer and tell them it’s value, because it’s likely that you won’t be covered for the full value of it as standard and it might even just come under computing or digital goods meaning you wouldn’t get enough for it. Just like upgrading your policy with an expensive new bike. It might not cost you much.

“tw4t” it on the ground a few times job’s a goodun :p

Complete and utter crap. What a load of wishy washy, non musical tut

Russian dashcams are the best source of entertainment since the hand. I can’t get enough of these videos, but it’s so hard to describe why I find them interesting!

INB4 In russia car drives you jokes… they’re old as fossilised poo.

The Bronx, Portishead, Flying Lotus (still could be I suppose but doubt that is his intention).

I build websites regularly and if there’s any advice I’d give you – it’s look at whats out there, and you will understand what is performing well and what is up to date.

Ditch the scraggy photo borders, they’re tacky. Ditch the background image for a neutral background colour with a soft texture like youtube or leave off white, put a rotating image gallery at the top on home page thats large enough to see photo detail without taking too long to load with a grid of maybe 3 x 2 of snaps with headings underneath.

Those are my suggestions. Buy premium wix too – it’s so cheap, but remember the achilles heel of wix is it’s SEO – It’s CRAP. Single page site menu etc. do some googling – you’ll see there are ways to improve SEO for free with a bit of graft within the legal confines of the wix TOS.

Nice work though 🙂

Yes, unlike PC’s mac’s rarely have compatibility issues. Unless you’re trying to get it to talk to a PC of course..

Not going to be much of a movie with three photos is it lol 😆

GO kaesae Go

FFS you appear biased because you are

Don’t even know who Kaesae is but you wouldn’t last very long on the playground would you?

Mindset of JunkYard: *Flawed argument has been broken down by a list of FACTS* *RESPONSE NEEDED* “You are someone else! Using a different user name!”

Very intelligent.

Wow, what grade did you get in your degree with this level of argument.

If you think that’s an argument I hate to think what grade you got in anything.

I love how all these threads end up in a load of “old boys” from the good old days of STW ganging up on anyone not afraid to post an opinion that is not the status quo. I apologise if my realistic and balanced view on world events doesn’t suit all you fashionistas who would rather read some hipster blog post about “currently fashionable political views” than a history book. You guys are meant to be the old timers, not me.

anti-Zionist.

Who isn’t? But anyone who thinks that some zionist world state taking over the world is a possibility in the 21st century is frankly a crack pot who’s no better in my eyes than the next 9/11 conspiracy theory nut.