I use the Cane Creek V [drop] levers, which have a slightly different shape to the SCR-5’s. They are likewise great levers, and handy if you need a bit more pull.

(Not that you’ll really be able to tell from this picture :wink: ).

Based on owning a (now) 17 yr old Defender for the last 7 years, and knowing enough people with new cars that are nothing but trouble – I’m going with Defender (heart over head perhaps tho’).

Built to be fixed, and put straight back into service – can the same be said of modern cars I wonder?

Mine’s a bit luckier than U31’s it seems, as it’s (touching wood) only big jobs have been a replacement fuel pump, damaged through water ingress when exceeding the wading depth (a bit), and a bit of work when the clutch springs went a a little tight and popped the slave-cylinder off the ‘box (which was only held on by one bolt – the other having left to pursue an independent life earlier in time).

Other than that, it’s just ‘normal’ service items, even the mpg is ok, and better than a lot of vehicles (Ok granted – spanking Aluminium out of Bauxite takes a lot of power, and old diesel engines = soot).

I’m not sure I’d fancy trying to fix a modern car that had died …

I’d agree it is significantly down to behaviours tho’.

This is mine …
Owned from new since 1992, but now only the frame remains of that vintage.

When the HS33’s finally destroy that rim on the back, I’ll fit a rear disc on some kinda adaptor bracket malarkey. If it snaps, I’ll have something made to replace angle for angle.

The only changes I have in mind are a wider/lower rack on the back, and some kinda rack on the front, but that’s it.

If I never owned another bike in my life, that would be fine …

(My Peregrine and my early 1990’s MBK road bike are pretty close seconds tho’).

Winter, heavy rain, riding on a busy main road when the evening commuter flow is at it’s peak and everyone is cold/wet/miserable and just wants to get home.

Nobody can really see anything out of steamed up car windows, and the road surface / raised drain covers / white lines conspire to make it scary and vile.

Right-click up above the document window, (but below the application window) you should get a context-sensitive menu with options what Word ‘tools’ are displayed.

Emphasis on ‘should’ …

I grew my last beard to celebrate the third (2007-2008) Whiskerino[/url], and I still have it.

+1 for the cat / dog pictures … :P

The last time I turned my TV off was in 2001. Then I unplugged it and took it to the tip.

Can’t see me ever owning another one.

Don’t some STI setups have some err, awkward ergonomics anyway?
I think I might have read somewhere about issues with … Sora (maybe) – being a bit lumpen to start with, the effect was found to be emphasised by the sweep of the Midge.

Err, that aside, as bars go, I find they are great, I’ve swapped out all my drops for these now (but run bar-end shifters, so can’t help with the STI question, other than to probably only half-remember something that I might have read on the internet, that might well be complete rubbish anyway).

I’ll get my coat … :wink:

Ok, I give in, here’s mine …

breatheeasy

I disagree slightly about Tokyo not being strategic value. It was the capital after all. Yes, a lot was destroyed, but to have potentially all of it obliterated by a nuke would still be a pretty hefty blow to the guts of the Japanese.

Ah, I agree entirely there, sorry that I wasn’t clear enough up the page – my earlier post would have made more sense it if said something like “[…] of no real militarily strategic value (and of only limited tactical value)” …

I can see an argument against not destroying Tokyo / destroying the ruling power in Japan (albeit symbolically).

There may have been a perceived risk in (again, albeit symbolically) destroying (rather than decapitating) Japanese political society / infrastructures – in that to do so could either cause civil instability and chaos that would take years to sort out (learn from history/doomed to repeat it anyone :roll:), or that it would galvanise the population into a kinda frenzied nationalism given that there was now, nothing else to lose, and you’d have a long, costly, attritional war against [potentially] unconventional forces far from home (err, learn from history/doomed to repeat it thing again)…

Perhaps a more far more powerful sign that you are utterly broken, to a majority of populace worn down by war, is to have your leaders ‘humiliated’ into suing for peace at the feet of a ‘gracious’ victor, and turn that into a spectacle for all to see. That way you know it’s ‘over’, and you have lost.

One assumes (gulp) that America knew enough about Japanese history to recognise the impact of the ‘shame’ of defeat, and used that strategically to plan the end?

It would have (should have) been perfectly clear to America that a friendly, post-war Japan would have been a very useful ally to have in the region in the coming years, so preserving institutions to aid with reconstruction would make sense.

A lot of the ‘traditional thinking’ about seeking to end the war quickly is still on firm ground tho’ – ending the war quickly would have prevented, or at least limited, the Soviet intervention in a wider war against Japan, thus denying them influence / control out into the Pacific, as well as ‘saving’ lives, or perhaps more expediently thought of as not ‘costing’ lives in a protracted ground war.

… and yeah, maybe the numbers did count, but had the potential of these devices not been used in 1945, when would they have been?

Maybe never of course, but had it been in amongst the paranoia, fear and irrationality of the late 1950’s/early 1960’s the ‘casualty’ figures would have been orders of magnitude higher, to the extent that it may very well have all ended then had the doctine of MAD (one way or another) not kept that particular demon in it’s bottle.

The multi stage thermonuclear devices tested during that period had yields of >1000x the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and whilst that’s not to claim a direct correlation of 1000x more power/damage, that distinction is only relevant to politics.

They are very odd things culturally. Ideally we’d all get rid of them, and that’d be that – but if ‘someone’ has them, lots of countries need them, paradoxically, just to prevent their use … but that’s for another thread.

This page is interesting in terms of illustrating relative proportionality. You [can] overlay a map of somewhere you know with a blast radius, drawn to match the device you use.

Compare Hiroshima (“Little Boy”) with the 1961 Soviet device “Tsar Bomba”

Don’t forget that the bombs were different types of bomb too – which may have influenced the decision to use the 2nd weapon on Nagasaki to a greater extent that may have been apparent at the time. Hiroshima was a simple (crude and untested) fission device, whilst Nagasaki was the same as the Trinity test device – a much more complex, shaped-charge Pu239 implosion device.

History suggests that Hiroshima had not been conventionally bombed to preserve it for the atomic bombing. Had it already been used as a target, the effects of the atomic bombing would not have sent ‘the’ message as clearly as flattening an intact city.

rkk01 has it about Tokyo – it was not selected as it had already been very heavily bombed and estimates suggest that >50% of the city was [already] destroyed (the casualty figures from which exceed both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki initial figures at somewhere in the region of ~100k people), plus there was no real strategic value in bombing Tokyo.

Nagasaki was the secondary target on the 9th, Kokura was the primary, but weather and logistics saved it (which is maybe an odd way to put it, but no less true because of that).

“American Prometheus” (Oppenheimer’s biography) is an interesting read, and adds to this period. You really do get the sense that the Cold War had begun well before WWII had ended …

Wasn’t really quite as much about Japan as was once perceived, current revisions of history are tending to regard it more in terms of the opening salvo in the Cold War.

The potential was demonstrated with the Trinity test a few months before, another ‘test’ would not have made the point (to either Japan or to Soviet Russia) as conclusively as a ‘live’ demonstration.

slugwash – Member

Panda Portrait FAIL!!!

Try again

I’m not even sure I was there that day.

:-)

Hmm, I’ve had mine for ages and I love it, but oddly, I don’t seem to have that many useful pictures …

Spends a good proportion of it’s time on slick 700*32’s (and still gets ridden off-road) – with alternative tyres of choice being 700*34 Bontrager CX tyres.

Wookieepedia has all / most / some of what you need to know here

It’ll be a dull ole’ ride to get there, and the surface will [then] kill your components, but there’s Woodbury Common too. It used to be really popular, but I rarely hear it mentioned these days (maybe that’s down to the attritional nature of the sand over there?). I guess it may even have been ‘closed’ too?

Maybe take a train out one way – either up on the Barnstaple line a bit, or down to Newton Abbot and then greenlane it back to the city?

Only echoing [almost] everyone, but yeah, bolt in/on tensioner pushing a half-link chain.I’ve had my Kona set up like this for ages, and it’s a joy.

Most of mine seem to have already made this list:
Diamanda, of course,
Katie Jane Garside
Chan Marshall
Tori Amos
… but in the right place/time some of Lisa Gerrard’s stuff is like nothing else on earth – music to be buried to.

New to the list (I think) but also up for a mention.

Sandy Denny
Emmylou Harris (choose carefully, as some stuff just doesn’t make it).
Stevie Wishart
Emma Kirkby

I also *really* like this (but it won’t be for everyone – possibly a bit too much beard/sandal/singlespeed content).

Mine (just visible here) seem to be quite a way inboard, by virtue of the bar shape…

There was a big CME a couple of years back that took out a number of TV and communication satellites over the Pacific. I don’t know what kinda EMP hardening they have – I’d guess ‘some’ simply to survive out there …

The sun does cycle activity, although it’s pretty quiet right now. These are statistical links between sunspot activity/CME’s and weather effects here; The activity of El Niño is well studied.

I’m sure I read somewhere that there is some research into the impacts on the efficiency of high-voltage power lines too (but I might have accidentally made that bit up).

Spaceweather[/url] is worth a look, they track flares, sunspot activity, as too, is the SOHO[/url] stuff from NASA.

Also not on the list, and now retired … Duncon Pitbull.

Added to which – maybe there was a material failure there and that contributed / caused the [initial] failure?

Absolutely, just put it down to experience and don't loose heart over it.

I'd refuse to believe that there is anyone, with any kinda fettling background, that's not found themselves staring in horror at something [similar] and wondering how on earth it happened.

In a similar vein to the camshaft tale above ^ a pal and I once walked [for what felt like miles] along a main road with a big box, collecting as many of the fragmented bits of his motorbike engine as we could find, after he'd replaced one of the bottom end shells and 'bolted it all back up properly' late the night before, in a barn where he was working.

We never did find everything, not that it mattered given that it was completely and utterly annihilated. When we stripped it later that day, it was scary how much damage had been caused, there was almost nothing we could salvage.

:roll:

I think he mostly wanted it done as a kinda public service, just to tidy up all the bits of metal from all over the road.

Not sure if it's *quite* what you had in mind, but this is from my last ride (coming back from one of the local farm shops at lunchtime today).

:P

Err, I decided to put knee-warmers on to start off today, but that's it so far.
Does that count? (also raised to "put another jumper on").

:wink:

Phew, I initially got her mixed up with that err, 'glamour model' R**** Riley, so the Countdown thing had me completely puzzled. :wink:

(… and if you go off grubbing around looking, what you'll find is absolutely not safe for work / with the family looking on / if you are a bit squeamish or easily offended (as 'glamour model' is a polite euphemism of course)).

the shorter it is the harder it is to bend in comparison to a long piece that just flops around

… and thereby ends the case for the defence, Your Honour.

:wink: :D

I've had beards in all sorts of different shapes for 20+ years and don't ever remember an itchy phase, (even when I shaved more than once in three years) …

Is it all over your beard, or just your chin / wherever?

My last shave was on the 31st of October 2007. Since then, my beard has only been trimmed once, and that was only to tidy it up from the 'bonfire incident' in June 2009.

:roll:

Unfortunately, that incident, and the tidy up cost me most of my beard, so despite the timescale, it's only about a year long now. Mine' like most other men of a certain age, is a colourful mix of dark colours, of grey and of ginger.

Separated at birth (ish) ^

Sadly not been ridden since … ooh, since early evening yesterday.

:P

What's this "giving up" malarkey ?
:wink:

This'll be the 2nd time I've posted this picture on here this very afternoon, so I'm sorry if it's all getting a bit dull …

My next bike is a steel road frame for comfortable day rides – I'm still not 100% sure what, but it'll be something very much like the the Condor Fratello, or the Thorn Audax … (I probably won't ride all day in sandals tho', especially once it starts getting properly wet/cold).

'92 Kona Fire Mountain.
Gets ridden 10x more than anything else I own.
Now fully rigid again, and of course, converted to single-speed.

Not the best ever picture tho' … that camera has funny ideas about perspective, it's a 19" frame, so it's a gate by comparison to more contemporary frame designs, but, it ended up looking like a child's bicycle here.

"Not even wrong" – and that's all of it, all religion, all lumped in together …

I find it difficult, impossible even to see past the absurd, arrogant, self-centred conceit implicit in 'religion'. Of the millions of species that have ever lived, that H. sapiens have the idea that they are in any way special or chosen is only because of a brain wiring that makes such thoughts both likely, and evolutionarily self-serving.

In evolutionary terms, it just luck that we ended up where we are, the world hasn't been created with us in mind, East Africa got a bit drier following a big quake, the highlands then create a rain-shadow, and the equatorial forest (although I'm not sure that's quite the right word, given that forest has come to mean a deer-park, not a wooded area) dries out, becomes a savannah, and some members of whichever higher primate species was around to make use of it chances it's arm and spends more and more time out on the plain exploiting the new environment (whilst the other side of the family stays in the woods).

Nobody has time to think about 'religion; until some kinda agrarian practice means that there is now a bit of spare time off. Time off from trying to find enough food to survive without [also] being eaten in turn. It's all nice simple stuff for a while, a few beads and flowers popped in as grave goods, a bit of ochre wiped on, and being laid out facing the rising sun, and something to say thanks to the animal spirits for the fecundity of the catch et cetera … but it all then goes kinda way too intense at some point after that.

At some future point in time, and statistically quite soon (albeit based on a combination of verifiable, sound empirical data andthe perhaps, slightly mystical applied mathematics field of probability) we'll join the significant majority of other species that have ever existed, and simply become extinct, owing to insurmountable environmental change.

Whatever follows on in a bit might have a go at something similar if it evolves up a similar evolutionary dead-end, or life might happily rumble on for a good few million years until the next big nugget / super-volcano / ice:seawater:methane ratio wipes the slate clean and something else gets to have a go.

Will any of it mattered then?
Not in any way likely is it? – Unless it turns out to be true of course :wink: – but we all know that's it's not really true don't we, even if one has to dig all the way down, past all the incontrovertible solidity of all that faith, the dogma, the rhetoric: when it comes to it, that there is nothing there at the end.

"Existence" doesn't hate you, nor does it love you, it's completely indifferent – all the human endeavours, the suffering, the glory, love, hope … all just tricks of your endocrine system, itself duped by a bit of viral protein simply hitching a ride onto the next generation, and the next, and the one after that … reprogramming the host a bit as it goes to suit the conditions (like it's done for the last ~3.5 billion years (on this planet anyway – could be longer elsewhere)).

What was the question – I think I might have gone off on a bit tangent?

:-)

Great live band, I last saw them in Bristol finishing off with a mutant Mogwai Fear Satan, everything turned up to 11, by now it was about 40'C in the hall, and the whole thing was set off by huge and very fast strobes. At this point the audience was either in the process of leaving as quickly as possible, or gently rocking back and forth, eyes closed, smiling kindly, and stroking their beards.

Also (maybe) try bands like:

ASMZ (of whom I'm especially fond, not that matters in any way of course).
Red Sparowes
This Will Destroy You
Aidan Baker / Nadja
Mono
…

If not live, then best sampled via decent headphones and from a lossless source, but I know what you young people are like with your bloomin' modern compressed audio :wink:

2005 Duncon Pitbull 4X = a very tough bike.
He's retired now tho'…

Depending on the application that's reading from /writing to the com port, and / or the extent of the underlying OS's HAL you might find that the USB <-> serial adaptors don't actually do anything other than give you the right shaped holes …

Does either end expect to find a hardware based parity check of any kind I wonder?

Some serial devices have a bit of a chat right down at the hardware level, before any application / data gets involved. Mostly stuff about saying hello and sorting out how they'll communicate therein.

Doesn't sound like you have much choice tho'?

I like serial interfaces – no good for shoving 'multimedia' data around of course, but ideal for long range, robust, error free transmission of small packets of data, like auto-pilots, depth plotters, GPS signatures, AIS signatures …

Right, I've read the original question again, so ignore all of the above … :wink:

If you need a full implementation of the USB connection on an old machine, you won't get it via the serial I/O, so no, the other ended verions of the above possibly aren't going to help you.

Does the handheld-computer have a PCMCIA card slot (or is it more like a Psion handheld, in that it's not got 'PC' architecture)?

If so, something like this might do the job (assuming you can then find the drivers):

Have a wider look too whilst you get the scans and the like …
Think about stuff like:

Poor workplace / driving / home / sleeping ergonomics?
'Trapped' nerve in your neck/shoulder?
Talk to a chiropractor?

I get a lot of hire cars through work, and some give me horrible aching / stiffness with associated headaches for days afterwards where I can't get the seating posture right on a long drive. Lots of stretching / yoga /drinking water help to tease all that back out.

The way you sit/stand/walk makes an impact on health, and it's often overlooked in stuff like this.

The other thing to consider is stress …

@snaps – scarily well timed thought convergence there ;-)

I've not used the 110 version (yet), but as headsets have needed replacing on my bikes, I've replaced everything with Cane Creek headsets: I really like them, they all seem to be well thought through, and so far, I've not even thought that longevity might be an issue, they go in, I give them a bit more grease, and there they stay quietly doing their job without making a fuss or drawing attention to themselves in any way.

Can't see the 110 being any different – the only reason I've not used that one yet, is that the other CC headsets work so well, I've never felt the need. They are more attractive as things in their own right tho' – I'll give you that.

Those bars tho', suggest, (suggest to me at least), that this bicycle is not without some thought…

:wink:

I've got one of the Avid Single Digit v-brake species on the back of mine (can't remember which tho'), pulled by one of a pair of Cane Creek Direct Curve levers and it works a treat … ok, works a treat for a v-brake.

Full length outer too tho' which is zip-tied on and probably looks a bit gash (if one was to worry about such a thing).

… but looking at it now with a winter riding head on … it's clearly not going to work with guards – it'll be ok with my clip-on SKS 'race' guards, but not proper full length guards.

The graphics are a good starting point for dating the era …
Photo?

:wink:
(I still regularly ride my '92 Kona).