I’m a regular visitor to your racing post threads oldgit. I’ll be doing much the same in 2011 as in 2010 (and still mid-table mediocrity no doubt):-

– Done the Glentress Duathlon series over the winter
– Signed up for the 6 Scottish XC races
– Doing 10 Under the Ben as a pair (did 10@Kirroughtree last year as a trio) with a few other friends coming up in other teams too
– Will probably do a couple of Scottish CX races which are close to home (I tried a couple on the singlespeed Inbred last year, but it would be nice to have a more suitable bike this year!)
– Fancy the 7 hour race at Glentress in June too, possibly solo (eek).

That lot should keep me out of trouble. The Innerleithen TT sounds good, but I’m a bit short of funds this month. :(

So will I end up in trouble if I offer £249,950 and 20K in cash.

If caught, yes. As a solicitor, I would probably decline to act if I had to submit the SDLT form for that one.

The only legal way to dodge the 3% barrier is as above:-

i) Apportion a few thousand for fittings and fixtures (but it must be reasonable)
ii) Get the seller to pay the SDLT for you (although you will need to notify your lender of this, as it is an incentive to purchase, so they will take it into account in the loan to value calculations).

Buying the garage separately won’t work, as it would be a series of linked transactions.

I’m holding out for under mountain in 2013.

It would be nice to see something like a mini Fort William red DH at Hillend. It seems to me like a bit of a no-brainer. There is plenty of land available, a chair lift equipped ski centre in financial trouble, and plenty of bikers already in and around the Pentlands.

Yup, was thinking exactly the same thing after reading Kit’s comments. I can’t see Midlothian Council spending the money on it at the moment, but a couple of trails parallel to the main slope and a bit of money spent on the chairlifts could provide some extra income for the centre, especially since the Innerleithen chairlift seems to never get any further forward.

Can’t see there being much room for trails in some of those locations, and I’d be surprised if Corstorphine Hill ever happens. I don’t see any of these places managing to have more than 5 minutes of riding, so only of interest if it is on your doorstep, or you plan to make good use of some techy skills bits. Still, extra trails are always welcomed, as it makes for interesting bits on longer routes for us city dwellers, or good areas for the kids to get started.

There seems to be some positive signs at Craigmillar though – I’d be interested to see how that pans out. The 48mins race there last year sounded good, so I think I might head along for a look if the same format is run again this year.

I’ve been wearing DHB eVent shorts over my 3/4 length tights for damp days recently. Not 100% dry, but comfortable enough. For a 2hr ride round Innerleithen last week (not raining, but lots of puddles from melting snow), my friend was complaining of cold, wet cheeks, but I was warm and dry enough for the full ride.

Not ridden them lots, but no wear issues so far.

No you don’t. You need the artwork JPG in the folder where the album is and thats it!

Well yeah, you can add your own artwork (I do for the odd album which doesn’t import with artwork), but the OP wanted iTunes to fill the artwork for him automatically when he ripped at CD, and that requires to be logged into the store.

You need to be logged in to the iTunes store to get album artwork, or else it doesn’t download it. I’ve never found anything (except limited release really obscure small band stuff) that won’t automatically get album artwork.

I’ve liked them since before the first album came out – saw them supporting a band in Glasgow. Nice guys, and lovely music. Listening to the new album on spotify – got a few good tracks on it, but I still prefer the first album.

This one does the rounds a lot. Thankfully I have no photos of myself faceplanting.

Looks pretty tidy though Al. You using that for commuting now?

Ade, likewise, I prefer the look of a lot of these white ones, and the blue is quite tidy too. Still curious about the glow in the dark though, as I’ve yet to see any decent photos of what it looks like in the day.

Glentress Duathlon for me on Sunday. 17km of biking fun followed by about 10km of running hell.

For just over a year I had around 1h45 to work (short car journey, 1h15 on train, then short walk), and then the reverse on the way home, but with a half hour walk instead of the short car journey, so spent a total of about 3h45 a day commuting. It was bearable, but didn’t leave much time to do anything in the evenings. I’d leave the office at 6pm, get home at 8pm, so by the time I had dinner and washed up, there was jut a bit of time left to slob on the sofa.

It is definitely do-able if you are on a train, but it’s great now have a 25 minute walk instead, as I get to go riding midweek. Having an iPhone kept me entertained with the STW forum and the news in the morning. I had grand plans to work every now and again, but rarely did.

[/url]
On-One Inbred ride in January 2011[/url] by pixelmix[/url], on Flickr

Green with red highlights here. Had some white bits too, but prefer a plainer look, so removed the white saddle, and will eventually remove the white brake levers. I think green/blue would look good too, and a little different.

Or the conspiracy theorists will tell you that it was pre-programmed to fail today, as Apple has literally just released new MacBooks today.

Can I be the first to say I thought Macs didn’t die! Arnt they superior to all other electrical devices and nothing ever goes wrong with them?

If the above is true I conclude that you must have a fake Mac!!

I realise this is a troll, but for the uninitiated, hard drives are made by Toshiba/Hitachi/your Gran/whoever and are no more likely to fail in one laptop than any other. The sensor thing I referred to above would mean that they are less likely to fail in laptops (such as recent MacBooks) which have a movement sensor.

Backup ASAP!

Does sound a bit borked, and once borked, I wouldn’t trust a hard drive again.

However, there is a slight chance that as Apple laptops have a “help I’m about to be dropped” sensor, which parks the hard disk head (to prevent damaging the drive), maybe your sensor is knackered, and not allowing the hard drive to be read. I’d say it is more likely that the hard drive is failing though – lots of moving bits and they don’t last forever.

Maybe stick it in an external casing to try to read stuff from it, and boot from the DVD drive?

Glentress, Innerleithen and the Pentlands are the most common venues, although I spend one night a week going out to Queensferry/Fife or up the WoL to Balerno and back, but that doesn’t really count as mountain biking. The downside of living on the North side of Edinburgh is that most riding from the door involves a repetitive slog to get anywhere.

In an average year I’ll also ride a couple of trail centres and a natural route in Lancs, most of the 7Stanes centres, Laggan, somewhere natural up north and half a dozen XC courses in Scotland. Not a bad wee mix, but I would like to shift the emphasis away from GT to more natural Highland stuff.

Quite a few Pentland mentions on here.

Do you feel like a noob because of how the bike looks, or because of how you ride it? If the former, then you just need to breeze past a few people on their 6″ travel bikes to feel superior, if that’s what floats your boat.

Some of the quickest people (up and down the hill) I see at Glentress are riding XC race hardtails. “XC riding” is a bit less “trendy” these days, but the reality is that a lot of people who buy “all mountain” bikes would struggle on some XC courses. Each to their own… it would be dull if we were all the same, all riding identical Stumpjumper FSRs.

XT on one bike and Avid Elixir 5 on the other bike (also had some Avid Juicy Ultimates in the past). If I was buying brakes tomorrow, I’d get XT.

Snap – 2010 X2 here also. Not taken any decent shots (been riding my other bike more this winter to save the wear n tear on this one), but snapped this on the camera phone yesterday.

[/url]
IMG_0032[/url] by pixelmix[/url], on Flickr

Currently stock apart from the KCNC seatpost clamp, the saddle (Charge Knife I had from the previous bike is marginally lighter than the stock saddle) and swapping the headset spacers for some carbon ones (not because I’m a weight weenie, just because I had them lying around).

Not planning on upgrading much, but fancy some low rise carbon bars, and otherwise will just replace bits as they break.

[/url]
IMG_0032[/url] by pixelmix[/url], on Flickr

Top of Innerleithen today. Just a light wet dusting and only from about half way up. It is to be warmer at the end of the week, so hopefully we won’t have any more proper snowfalls this winter. Now if the trails would just dry out a bit…

Lol at Flip

Hmm, not exactly the answers I was hoping for. If only the ceiling had been done properly in the first place. Grrr. I do like the idea of UPVC ceilings in bathrooms, but I’m not sure I can be bothered for a flat we plan to sell within 4-5 months.

I suspect a lot of people on here have a higher standard than other cyclists. You see people tootling around town with a rusty noisy chain, brakes rubbing or barely touching the rims, and they have no problem with it.

One man’s “broken beyond repair” is another man’s “working perfectly”.

I watch very little TV, but do probably watch an intersting documentary on iPlayer on average about once a month (normally after seeing a PSA thread on here!) which is from BBC4.

As above, it is the opposite for ITV, which means it is one of the few channels making anything of any intellectual worth.

I don’t think BBC 4 / Radio 4 is at real risk, as they cater to a very different audience from the ITV / Murdoch target audience.

I’ve got some generic hangers which have been up for years with no issues. As above, you’ll want to use your own rawl plugs and screws though.

Unless your guitar is a valuable relic, I wouldn’t worry about hanging it from it’s neck, but remember to keep it out of direct sunlight, so save the wood getting warped / discoloured from being in the sun all of the time.

Geesh, you do sound a bit ham fisted.

I’ve just replaced a knackered BB, but it didn’t stop me riding, just felt really gritty. I normally have brakes that rub a bit on one bike, but I’m learning to live with it, as they normally clean themselves up a bit once you get going. My singlespeed chain tension is often a bit dodgy, but hopefully that will improve now that I’ve gone back to two chaintugs and replaced the rear skewer.

Last night the chain on my singlespeed came off (newish chain and I know it is stretching, but it’s just too long to take a link out still), and was a bugger to get back on. Just loose enough to come off, but too tight to get back on without moving the chaintugs to allow the wheel to go forward. :evil:

I then had some odd sounds from my Candy pedal an hour later. Stopped to try to tighten up the bolt on it, but in the end it gave up 10 minutes further on, and I had to ride home on the spindle, in the rain. :(

As a result, I can totally sympathise with you this morning.

Have you considered a rigid singlespeed for rubbish weather? That would knock off half of the items on your list there.

The current version (4.2.1) isn’t too bad on my iPhone 3G, but it does benefit from being turned off and on again if you have had it on for a bit and used multiple apps.

The v4.0 software was the worst for sluggishness, but the current v4.2.1 isn’t too bad. It is a bit slow, but is perfectly useable, and probably no slower than what she currently has. 4.3 is due out soon, so who knows what that will be like. Rumours suggest that 4.3 may not work on the iPhone 3G at all.

I recently picked up a 2010 X2. I’ve been avoiding using it too much in the mud, but have done a couple of races on it, and a reasonable number of rides. It climbs really well, especially churning away in the middle ring up firetrack climbs. I had an absolute blast on it the last time I took it to Glentress, as it was so much faster and smoother, so I was carrying a good bit of extra speed over the jumps.

I have had a 2008 Epic in the past, but haven’t ridden them close enough together to make a fair comparison. Even with 100mm forks, the Anthem is sure footed enough for me on descents, partly thanks to the 670mm bars. I had a Scandal in between, but it’s probably not fair to compare the Scandal to the Anthem, as they are quite different.

Can’t comment on 120mm forks, but the bottom bracket is fairly low, although not excessivly low for a XC bike.

I’m not very adventurous when it comes to stairs, but there are a few cheeky little jumps to be had at St Vincent Place in Edinburgh.

There are a few easy sets around the Parliament / Dynamic Earth area too.

If you didn’t already know, check here[/url] to make sure you can get advance tickets. Advance tickets are generally released around 12 weeks before the date of travel, but it varies by a few days. There is generally a limited number of the cheapest ones, and then they start increasing in price as they get sold.

I got it down to a fine art when buying 10 advance singles a week to get to and from work.

Edit:- obviously this won’t help you with March 13thfm

Jazz Mag?

Steve, there is someone in my “Pompino photo thread” who put 700C wheels on an Inbred, which fits if you have sufficiently low profile tyres. From what you have said though, it sounds as if you would benefit from something a bit chunkier in terms of tyres for your ride, so you would need to go with 26″ feels or get a 29er frame if looking at MTB frames.

Sounds like you would get on well with a “monstercross” bike with mudguard eyelets (drop bar 29er with 1.5″ 29er tyres)?

You don’t say when your friend purchased, or if there are any areas of repairs required to the flat you are looking at.

If his price is lower than you were expecting, surely this is a good thing? At least you will know if you are paying too much, and can either hold the survey as evidence to the seller or walk away.

Cotic X doesn’t have rack mounts though, (or mudguard mounts I believe). Presumably you are using on or both for a regular commute?

Cotic Roadrat might fit the bill. On-One Pompetamine possibly?

29er might allow slightly chunkier tyres than you average cross frame, which would soak up the potholes a bit better.

Right there. You want the Connect to Server option as you say. Can’t tell you off the top of my head where your PC will tell you the IP addres, but if you dig around in the network stuff on the PC, that should tell you somewhere.

There is a reset option in the Settings app. You can also do a factory reset when it is connected to iTunes.

I don’t have direct experience, but I do have an EL-320, which looks to be the older version. You won’t want to use it anywhere unlit, but it is reasonably bright for being seen around town.

I’ve used it on pitch black tarmac estate roads before (caught out be darkness in autumn), and didn’t enjoy the experience.

If you need to see in unlit areas, I’d get something else, otherwise I’d say go for it at £20.

Go for the shared folder approach. Should be easy with the Mac (Isn’t everything?) to then slurp all the data into the right place for it all to work.

Agreed, get an ethernet crossover cable between the two or connect them both to the same network, connect to the mac using the IP address, and drag and drop the iTunes folder across.