One of the minor things that can make a big difference to how private second-hand buyers value the car is the clear-ness of the headlights. If you’ve got cloudy headlamps, it can make the car look scruffy and old; if the headlamp glass is bright and clear, it influences buyers to think the car is in good condition. (I can’t remember where I read this, but it did make a difference when I sold my old Honda Jazz)

It doesn’t take long, a bit of careful masking-off, a pack of wet&dry fine grit paper, and a couple of hours, and I reckon it added at least £200 to the price I got for the car – *however* mine was a private sale through eBay, not to a dealer.

What about hoarding virtual guns eg in Minecraft?

In Minecraft’s defence, it doesn’t have guns at all. You can kill innocent creatures, e.g. animals or villagers, with the weapons you’d use to kill enemies (swords, usually), but there’s no game-reward gratification in it other than gaining animal meat or skins. It’s not like GTA where killing people actually rewards you in the game.

Back on topic, a friend is on the sex offenders register because his ISP reported him searching online for child abuse images. The sad thing is he was looking for images of himself as a child, to try and pursue a case against the man who’d abused him many years ago, because he knew there had been photographs and was trying to find them. He’d drawn crude pictures of what those images might look like – and those were also classed as “indecent images” when it was all investigated – so I don’t think it matters whether the images are AI generated, drawn in green crayon, or actual photographs.

What do you lot think of this 1972 reissue? https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1662/4595/files/2V69500_2048x.png

I think it’s horrible!

@dave_h – Usenet! Spent far too many hours on uk.rec.cycling and rec.bicycles.tech in the mid to late 90s. Frequently on the green-screen VT220 terminals in the library because they were most likely to be available.

But, on here since about 2002-ish, I think. Crikey…

I managed to get stung while at Sennen Beach in Cornwall a couple of years ago. It definitely hurt, but I’d seen other people (and kids) limp screaming out of the sea, so I think it definitely varies from person to person – and fish to fish, probably.

It hurt a _lot_ to walk on. The lifeguard / beach people poured water from a kettle into one of the several plastic pots they had ready for this sort of thing, and I sat there for 20 minutes with my foot in water “as hot as you can bear” while people walking past gave me pitying looks and the guy at the surfboard hire place topped the water up with fresh kettle water from time to time.

It carried on hurting for a few days. @ampthill you make a really good point – a few months later there I noticed there was a pain there for my first few steps every morning but I thought I’d caused myself a new injury, I’ve only just realised the two were probably related.

Have you read “The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck” by Mark Mason?

It’s very good.

I totally disagree.

Somewhere in there is one very good message, but it’s basically the first habit of “The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People” by Steven Covey, which was published about twenty years earlier. I’d definitely recommend reading that instead; Mark Mason comes across as a noisy stoner man-baby who really wants you to know how much he thinks he’s got everything sorted, and wants you to be impressed by how much he can swear.

TL;DR: focus only on the things you can control, and you will feel more in control of your life and less bothered by stuff like the OP’s problem. Seven Habits is a much more useful book because it’s got a further six useful habits!

Edit: well done @the-muffin-man, ignoring work notifications outside work hours (in general) is good for your mental health. This was the customer’s problem, not yours. :)

I broke mine in late 2019 in Mallorca and had the plate put in there to hold the bits together. I flew home a few days later and the next day went to the fracture clinic at King’s College Hospital in London to get checked out (and for all the after-care stitch removal etc.).

The surgeon I saw there was pretty critical of the job the “butcher” in Mallorca had done – the plate was on the forward-upward facing edge of the bone and a couple of the screws had been left sticking out slightly so he told me to expect some uncomfortable scarring but to give his office a call if it was still problematic nine months on.

As mobility improved and swelling subsided I found that the prominent screws were a bit of a problem – it would be sore if I was wearing a seatbelt, or especially a rucksack.

So I gave them a call and had a follow-up appointment and re-X-ray and (after several Covid tests – this was early 2021) had surgery to take out the plate and remove some lumpy scar tissue.

It felt better almost straight away. I was warned that the bone would still be fragile for a few months as the screw holes would take a while to fill in, but it felt “free-er” probably because the scar tissue was removed as well. It took only a couple of weeks for the swelling and redness to die down and I think I was comfortably wearing rucksacks a month later. I was very grateful for an NHS that made this possible!

We’ve been there a handful of times. The area near the Louvre as the riders come up from the tunnel is normally pretty good if you get there an hour or so before they first come through. The riders slow up a bit as they climb out of the tunnel and turn the corner, so you get a pretty good view of them.

Well done! Sod’s law strikes again. ;)

Kryptonite locks come with little codes stamped into the keys. If you lose a key or break it, you can order replacement keys via their website. If you’ve lost both keys – but you took a photo of the key on your phone when you bought the lock – you can still order new keys.

There’s not much that will stand up to an angle grinder. However, the Hiplok D1000 is really impressive because something something graphene – https://hiplok.com/product/hiplok-d1000/ – but, as @damascus’ friend found out, pissed off thieves with an angle grinder can still ruin your day even if they can’t steal your bike(s).

I tried archery while on holiday. Really enjoyed it, but realised after the session that I couldn’t feel the end of my middle finger, which I’d been using to hold back the string.
I realised, when I still couldn’t feel it the next day, that I’d probably damaged the nerve.
It took around three months to restore normal feeling to the tip of that finger. Very odd.

Settings – General – Background App Refresh: turn off background app refresh access to EVERYTHING except stuff that you might actually want to run in the background while the screen’s locked. Audio players, maps (e.g. Google Maps, for driving directions) and Strava are the only things on mine. Or at the top of the screen you can simply turn it off for all apps.

Same with Settings – Privacy & Security – Location Services: almost nothing needs access to your location all the time. Including many of the System Services (at the bottom of the page).

Squinty-eyed brain-powered old-school pattern recognition makes me guess:

First letter options W R K X
Second letter options F P
First number options 2 5
Second number options 3 9 6
Third letter options K L
Fourth letter options W J
Fifth letter options T X Y

…I’ve spammed the DVLA reg checker with a few of what I thought were the most likely options, but haven’t found anything useful yet.

EDIT: WP59KWT? Comes up as a “Focus Zetec” but based on what ads678 said, might be it?

Yes, the podcast, “A Thorough Examination” by Chris and Xand Van Tulleken is an excellent listen. Very enlightening about UPF, and tackled in an interesting way. We’ve been trying to be more aware of highly processed food since… and realising it’s everywhere!

The podcast series is on the BBC website, episode one at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017tcx

We’re about to move house, to a 1920s place in a street with lots of older people in it. We’re planning on pulling up the horrible crazy paving front garden (about 5 sq m of it) and planting wildflowers. This will be an interesting way to get to know the neighbours. ;)

Thanks all! – the CELLONIC is the battery available on Amazon, and probably the one I’ll try.

Keando, I’ve had similar issues with the USB port on mine. It would charge but not connect to the PC. I’ve cleaned it out with contact cleaner and an old toothbrush countless times, it’s still holding out.

I like the different bike profile thing too. And that it seems to charge pretty quickly when I plug it into a USB battery.

Looks like I’ll give the Cellonic battery a go!

Most Honey probably is adulterated, but local raw honey is a world apart from the shit you buy at Tesco..

Definitely. We bought a jar from a farm with beehives near my mother-in-law’s place in Devon and it was like liquid fudge, absolutely amazing.

A squeezy bottle of runny amber stuff for £1 from Sainsbury’s is obviously mostly sugar syrup.

Microbits are lovely to start out on, my son had a lot of fun playing with one.

Possibly a silly question, a simple Google search hasn’t enlightened me: does anyone know where we can hear Ned Boulting’s commentary on this year’s Giro?

I’ve been enjoying his podcast, Never Strays Far, he’s mentioned commentating, but I thought Eurosport / GCN was the only live coverage available.

We’ve had a Vango Airbeam tent for quite a few years and it’s been excellent. It uses inflatable tubes instead of poles, so it’s a bit lighter and less faff to put up, but the main thing is it’s immenseley resilient. The airbeam tents were the only ones left standing on the campsite in Cornwall the morning after a storm-with-a-name blew through – all the tents with poles had been twisted and bent out of shape, the airbeams had just flexed, allowing the tents to deform, but had then just returned to their original shape as the wind died down. We had to replace a couple of guy lines that had broken, but the tent was otherwise unharmed.

I’d definitely recommend one.

There’s nothing wrong with saving paper. Why would you have an issue with his doing this?

I don’t disagree with saving paper. My issue with him doing this, without going into graphic details, is that the squishy creation he ends up with usually necessitates further paper use, AND washing his hands very thoroughly without touching anything else first. Which, being a 10-year-old boy, he’s not great at.

Oh and speaking of standing, it’s not bolt upright, to attention, buttocks clenched, but nor is it sitting down.

This! I’m also stand / sit agnostic, but when “standing” it’s more of a lift, knees at 90 to 135 degrees sort of pose.

FWIW I’m also in the “folding” group, my wife is in the “scrunching” and she uses a lot more toilet paper than me. While we’re sharing, I’m trying to discourage my 10-year-old son from employing a techniqe that involves taking several sheets of paper at once, like his mum, but then folding and wiping, like me, BUT then folding over and wiping again, and repeating until either he’s clean or runs out of paper.

We’ve called this technique the “Shiss Roll”. :/

Great work Fudd, and thanks for the detailed photos!

I rode the Devon coast to coast route with a very bike-keen 7-year old in 2019 and it was brilliant. We rode from Barnstaple to Plymouth over three days (I’d actually planned for four, but he made very good progress). The route is partly on disused railways so is easy going, and the road bits are quiet and mostly traffic-free. There are lots of campsites along the way, and the ones we contacted were amenable to an adult, a child, two bikes and a small tent turning up on the day, so we found changing our plans was easy to do.

I’m going to keep an eye on this thread because he’s now 10 and we’re planning to find something to ride this summer too… :)

Being a teenager in the early 90s, I thought “Molly’s Lips” was a Nirvana original.

I only found out earlier this year it’s a cover of a song by The Vaselines:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2wGu3VjmNo

…AND it’s actually a song about Molly Weir, the actress who played Holly McWitch in Rentaghost, whose character always had very red lipstick.

Which is how I now have stored away in my head a “did you know Nirvana have a song about Rentaghost” fact, which is bound to remain buried for several years.

I’ve been to a few of them. I wouldn’t bother going again.

Disclaimer: I work in the industry, so get chance to go to a few trade shows, so have usually seen all the new shiny kit before it gets shown at the Cycle Show. But then almost any decent cycling media outlet will have also seen this kit and talked about it and reviewed it in exhaustive detail too, so unless you really want to go and see something in the flesh you’ll probably not see anything new.

If the Cycle Holidays area is there, that _might_ be a useful place to browse for ideas and to find new tour operators.

There’s nowhere near the level of freebies or unique promo stuff handed out as there used to be years ago, and even the weird quirky brands and companies you only tend to see at expos seems to be diminishing too as the cost of exhibiting has risen.

Last minute sub into a ski holiday at Les Arcs this coming week. It looks like there’ll be some fresh snow in time for it too… fingers crossed!

For a “do not recommend”, I’d suggest steering clear of “Pepsi Where’s My Jet?” on Netflix.

It’s a nice idea for a 4-part documentary series, the story of the guy who spotted that when Pepsi launched TV ads where you could redeem Pepsi Points for branded merch, they didn’t include a “we’re only joking” on the final shot where they said if you had 7 million points you’d get a Harrier jet. So he set about accumulating 7 million points and asked for the jet. Then, when they said “we were only joking”, he took them to court. Because, America.

It should be a 1-part, or perhaps 2-part documentary. It’s so over-blown and overindulgent, stringing the story out into four hours. I haven’t even watched the fourth part to find out what the outcome was, and to be honest I’m so fed up at the previous three that I don’t know if I can be arsed.

For 20% off, use your mouse to select the whole model number top right (above UTILITY METAL), right mouse and “copy”. Voila, a 20% code appears….

Oh that’s a handy hack – well spotted!

I’ve been waking up between 5 and 5:30 for the last few weeks, whether I want to or not. Like the OP, I’ve tried going back to sleep and then I sleep badly and sometimes through my alarm which is usually set for 6:30.

…maybe the clocks changing this weekend will solve that? We’ll see.

If I ever have a tattoo, it’ll be “There’s treasure everywhere”

Totally agree! :)

A lot of sites that sell supplements will pander to the “more is better”, so you can buy pills with crazy amounts of vitamins and other chemicals (glucosamine, etc). I remember one of my Physiology lecturers telling us that in pretty much all non-extreme cases, you won’t overdose, you’ll just end up with “very expensive urine.”

Just back from a week in Portes du Soleil. Morzine and Les Gets have pretty poor snow at the moment (Zore is closed and mostly mud!) but we were staying in Essert Romand; we booked fairly late so ski lessons for the small person were full up in Morzine and we ended up booking lessons in St Jean d’Aulps.

…and it was surprisingly good over there! It’s on the same ski pass if you get the full PdS pass, it’s a 15-minute drive away and I think because it’s less popular it was much quieter. And there was decent enough snow. It’s not a massive ski area, so I pootled around over there while he was having lessons in the morning, we drove back to Essert Romand for a quick lunch then headed to Morzine / Les Gets for the afternoons, but the best snow was definitely at St Jean.

With a bit more snow cover, it looks like there’s some decent back country to explore too. Another time.

The Velo Barn near Westerham is great little place. Good coffee and cakes, helpful workshop and always worth a stop if you’re riding out that way.

Depends on what you call cheap, but I bought a “Tiny Pump” from evil Amazon, their version of the Therm-a-rest inflator, because I didn’t want to fill my sleeping mat with moisture from my breath and it’s pretty hard filling the inflation sack when there’s no wind. And it’s really really good. And really tiny.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/FLEXTAILGEAR-Portable-Ultra-mini-Rechargeable-Mattress/dp/B08GS84832

IIRC the Ibis in Troyes centre has a good secure underground car park with a LOT of insulation on the roof and pipes, which makes it a very good “dead” space – there’s no echo, so slamming your car door (or your 8-year-old son running around whistling and stamping his feet) sounds quite unexpected. ;)

IANAP, but what does your dishwasher empty into? We’ve had problems because ours, and our washing machine, connects into the thing under our sink that works like a U-bend. Or water trap, or whatever it’s called. So if we let too much food waste go down the sink, or if too much fluff comes out of the washing machine, the trap gets bunged up and I have to clear it out or the dishwasher and washing machine don’t empty properly.

BUT a further problem is beyond the trap. Where the pipe exits our house, it joins other waste pipes from other flats in the block. And, somewhere outside our property, if that pipe gets bunged up (if our upstairs neighbour empties their fat fryer down their kitchen sink and causes another “fatberg”!), our water can’t drain. Or, worse still, their water backs up up our kitchen waste pipe and we get their washing machine waste water flowing up into our sink!

So I’ve fitted a non-return valve in the pipe just before it leaves our property, like this:

…which means waste water can flow _out_ of our place, but not back into it.

@Robz, nice watch. I’ve toyed with the world of modding and decided to leave it to the experts because I wanted my watch to be reliable; I had the bezel and crystal swapped on my SKX007J as well as having the mechanism re-calibrated and it came back significantly better than new, and way more accurate. I didn’t want it to look too different from stock, so a flat sapphire and a ceramic bezel with lume just smartened (and hardened) it up a bit.

@dmorts I sent mine to Paul at Tempus Watch Mods, he was superb. His Instagram is worth a look (and contains how to get in touch with him) at https://www.instagram.com/tempuswatchmods/

@bfw that’s a lovely looking collection!

@thecaptain

If she had topped herself then breaking in wouldn’t have achieved anything anyway.

If she’d tried topping herself but was still alive it could have helped. I’ve been in a similar situation, called by the students in a corridor because one of their friends wasn’t answering her door or phone, and after calling the hall staff we ended up letting ourselves into her room and found she’d overdosed. We called 999, she was ambulanced out and lived to tell the tale. Without our intervention she’d probably have died.

Background: I was a “senior student” in halls. In exchange for 20% off accommodation fees, I was on a rota where I had to be on site and “on duty” one night a week, carrying out basic fire door and shared kitchen checks, but also available for welfare-related calls. I was given basic training on physical and mental first aid and had several pages of info on which numbers to call, which procedures to follow for welfare / health concerns and all the fire and safety requirements. Anybody whose job involves entering other people’s bedrooms *should* have been given the rules on this because the uni will have a policy.

FWIW I think something doesn’t add up here too:
1) If it’s a routine inspection and the room is occupied with the chain on, come back another time (but make efforts to let the room occupant know you’re there so they know who you are and can let you in if possible).
OR
2) If you’re removing the chain and entering the room as a welfare concern issue, the main thing you are there for is to check the occupant’s welfare. There’ll be a protocol for this, follow it and log it. This is significantly more important than the routine inspection and any Uni’s Safeguarding person will be the person to talk to about this.
…it doesn’t make sense to claim they removed the chain out of welfare concern, but they didn’t then check on the welfare of the student.

@Ambrose surely with only the slightest bit of truth-stretching you’re ready for the best teacher excuse – “sorry kids I can’t give you your assessments back… the dog ate your homework”!