Liked that a lot. Thanks.

Out of interest, what frame-rate does the GH-1 capture? The slow-mo is very smooth.

Did you lube the nipples (ooh-er missus!) before threading onto the ends of the spokes?

I stress relieve my wheels by putting a long socket extension through from one side of the wheel to the other above the final cross from each side and push the bar towards the hub a few times, you could try that. Also, after stress relieving, I would expect to need to do a little bit of further fine tuning.

If you're seriously concerned about the pack size and weight, then have a look a the range from Robens. I've got a Triple Dreamer – it's a 6-berth (3 room) tunnel design with modular (removable) rooms depending on your needs. Compared to most other "family" tents of similar size, it's half the weight (17kg) and rolls up into a single pack, the size of a duffel bag.

Are you sure they were 80mm originally? A 1996 would surely have had 63mm?

Actually, you could well be right there.

Oh well, it looks like I'll be sticking to the 100m forks, and will have to add another steed to the garage for a longer travel more hardcore HT – what a bummer!

Humax are releasing their model in June I believe – that's the one I'll be going for.

Freedivers use a technique called pack stretching where they hold a deep breath and then stretch, in particular the intercostal muscles (the ones between your ribs). By increasing the flexibility of those muscles it allows the freediver to take (and consequently hold) a larger volume of air by allowing the ribcage to expand more.

By doing this, they don't change the mechanics of their CV system, or change/improve their ability to do gas exchange in the lungs, but it gives them a bigger FVC, which for freediving is important (only in part because of the increased oxygen contained in the lungs, more significantly it's of benefit as the larger volume of gas makes depth equalization easier)

Just to add, I've known plenty of people pass out when pack stretching, so be careful trying it without supervision based on advice on the internet!

I would expect that if you did any form of CV exercise in an attempt to try to increase your FVC, it would be the fitness increase that would be more useful than any consequential increase in lung volume.

23,600

awaits doom-mongers who'll tell you the charger will burst into flames and burn down your house if you do that… (no it won't)

I beg to differ.

OK, the house didn't burn down – good job too as it's thatched – but my charger did burn and get hot enough to melt into the mess you see above.

Get about 3 feet of steel tubing about the same internal diameter as the trunk of the tree. Slide it half over the stump and re-erect the fallen tree into the top half – the tree will still eventually die, but it'll really mess with his head, maybe to the point that he comes round and says "Hey, I chopped that down once already?!" then you'll have his confession that it was him.

I'm 100kg and I've got a firm (Blue) spring in my Lyriks. Much better than the normal (Red) one that they came with and I don't find I blow through all the travel as I'm not much of an air-monkey!

My feelings are that if you're in between sizes, go for the lighter weight spring and you'll probably be fine or you can put a little more compression damping on.

Saw that a while back. It's still fugly as hell and hasn't improved with age! Would rather get 2 of their 'normal' P7 bastid lights.

I've got a 1998 V40, 2L turbo petrol Auto with nearly 160K miles on the clock, most of which I've done.

Great, reliable car but the boot's not the most estate-like as it doesn't open to a flat floor like a lit of other estates.

luked2 – you're wrapping your bar tape the wrong way I think. You should wrap from the bottom of the bar towards the centre – that way your weight on the bar has a tendency to flatten the tape rather than rolling it off.

I'd want a lot more than £42k to look after 8 kids.

What's worse is that he's getting £42k take home – you'd need to be earning close to £70K gross in a proper job paying tax and NI to take home that…

I like the way they named their youngest daughter after a recent sponge-purchase: "Mercedes" – obviously not the most imaginative of people!

We can expect their next children to be called "iPad" and "BlueRay"

What a fox will often do is kill them all, take what it needs immediately for it's young, then return later for more now the hard work is done – usually though owners will find the aftermath of the first encounter and do the clean up themselves.

We lost many geese and chickens to foxes but did manage to take out 1 fox when it came back for a return trip.

1. The tracker could have come off the cat inside the house – ours manage to shed their collars on a regular basis.
2. If the cat's dead, breaking in and getting is not going to change that fact so it makes no difference (except for your own peace of mind) if you go in or not.
3. Cats can survive for many days without food (they may well be able to drink from the toilet if they were inside).
4. Our cat will cry if it's locked in somewhere – I've locked ours in the garage accidentally several times, so if it's stuck somewhere I think you'd hear it from the flap.
5. One of our cats has gone off for several days at a time and come home fine they're pretty resourceful.
6. If it's injured then of course if would be nice to go in and get it, but I agree with other comments that firstly it's unlikely to have headed to a house other than it's home if it was injured enough and still mobile and secondly you'd want to get in by a legal method.

If you want OS mapping capability, then you're REALLY limiting your choice and the only ones I know of that can do that are more outdoor ones than bike specific ones.

The SatMap Active 10 and MemoryMap Adventurer 2800 are the only two I can think of off the top of my head with full OS mapping capability.

There's loads of other options from Garmin etc. that offer mapping capability, but it's not OS mapping, it's TOPO mapping or something similar.

Mechanics fault. Especially as you say the replacement was a warranty repair.

I agree that people should "check" their bike before riding, but you can't check every nut, bolt and fastener – you'll just do a few high level safety checks. A wheel clamped into the dropouts would appear firmly attached if you just perform a cursory check.

The DX's even have a set of the original Aztec brake pads on – anyone remember those!

Found 2 sets of canti's in the garage. Both, proper retro!

One pair of Shimano Deore DX low profile's (circa 1991) complete with straddle cable.
One pair of Suntour XC9000's (circa 1989) unfortunately one return spring is missing.

I've also got an complete Odyssey brake booster (with Titanium pivot bolts) if you want to reduce the flex and gain more power!

Welcome to have anything that's useful.

Actually Paul, I think I've got a couple of sets of canti's kicking about in the garage – I'll go take a look.

On a more serious note, I think that canti's are gonna be your best solution – I ran canti's on bikes for years and never had any set up problems. No messing around with travel-agents or v-daptors, plenty of clearance. If you wanted even more power then you could look at a set of Suntour SE (Self Energising) canti's which use a helical spring in the body to apply additional force to the rim harnessed from the frictional forces that try to pull the cantilever towards the stays. (usable on the rear only)

Add another bike to the garage and get a dedicated road machine! ;o) I'm sure my feeble 20yr old dual-pivot calipers aren't representative of modern road brakes!

OK, maybe I'm wrong, I did proviso that statement with "I think…"

My employer used this as rationale for not offering the scheme to us as they said that they had to provide these facilities (storage, changing, showering) to all employees across all of our locations in order to not discriminate. For the production facilities, this was easy, but for the offices it wasn't so they decided against offering the scheme to anyone. Perhaps this was an internal company ethic of non-discrimination rather than a government obligation.

I think that employers only have an obligation to provide for cyclists if they subscribe to the cycle-to-work scheme, which would include secure storage and shower/changing facilities.

In the summer, this would be a nice solution!

Mine arrived this morning! WooHoo!

To be honest I did think that option 3 was probably what the concensus would be. The stumpy had a new drivetrain last year, so that would mostly be usable if I wanted. In fact the bike's a bit like Triggers Broom, with only a few bits that are actually 14 years old (frame, headset, hubs, vees & seatpost spring to mind)

So, next dilemma is what long travel HT to go for and how to slip it past the wife!

OK, good to know – I had read somewhere about specialized dropouts that angle backwards not being compatible, but I didn't think mine did? What about THIS ONE?

It almost looks in the review that they've fitted it to my frame. About thrice the price of the A2Z one, but I like the way it tranfers the load to the brake boss (albeit in a different direction to the load exerted bu vee's) rather than risking shearing off your dropout.

Any experiences?

Cool that's great, thanks!

Removing the QR – I've got to do that on my Reemedy so no great shakes there. I can see a little project….

My ethics:

If buyer 1 had verbally agreed to buy AND agreed terms/method of payment then I would hold off selling to #2 until it's clear that he's not sent the monies in the fashion agreed (more or less immediate for PayPal, a day or 2 for bank transfers)

If it's a case of #1 said he THINKS he wants them but needs to check something out (no agreement on payment method/timing expectation) then I'd sell them to another party who's got the readies burning a hole in their pocket and is prepared to commit to a timescale for payment – unless you have agreed with #1 a timescale upon which you'll "reserve" the sale for him.

(In fact I was "the other guy" mentioned in missingfrontallobe's example above – sorry MFL)

For a non-collapsible one – anyone got a Sealey Tools one and would like to comment?

Being non-folding I would expect it to be a little more robust and stable perhaps?

What about OpenProj? From what I recall it runs as a Java app so I think it's platform independant and would work on an Apple – best thing is it's free. Certainly worth a try if it works?

I finally took the plunge and ordered a GoPro HD Hero Helmet setup from the US with a 32GB card from Hong Hong. It all arrived today after about 2 weeks, really looking forward to getting it all set up and working.

GoPro HD Helmet Hero: $299 (£179)
Shipping from the US: $35 (£22)
Import fees (VAT + ParcelForce handling) £32
36GB class 6 SDHC card: £23 (from Hong Hong)
Total price just over £250 which is over £100 saving on buying all the components at UK prices.

Have been wandering around the house with it strapped to my lid most of the evening!

How about a Knight XV – pictured here next to an "ordinary" Hummer

Bulletproof as standard!

You can't auto-filter horizontally unfortunately, but you could cut-and-paste-special your data using the "Transpose" flag to turn your columns of data into rows that you could then use the autofilter on.

edit: just to clarify the autofilter – you would be able to then filter out all the rows (previously columns) that have a value of "blank" in to only show the rows with 3 data elements.

[/reminisce on] I remember reading my first Mint Sauce cartoon in a 1988 edition of "Bicycle Action", long before the likes of MBUK appeared on the scene! [/reminisce off]

What do you mean "efficient"?

Fuel efficiency of the attached vehicle? If that's what you mean, then a rear mounted one would be a lot more aerodynamic than a roof mounted one.

I've got a Dualit Espressivo, works very well, if a little noisy – about £170.

[/pedant on] it's eSpresso, not eXpresso BTW! [/pedant off]