Aliens Ate My Buick – Thomas Dolby

fyi

BBC story about accelerated entry to teaching

also, I think it used to be the case at least that it is only the state system that insists on PGCEs, private schools were happy to take good graduates and train them up themselves, don’t know if this is still the case.

The Volvo is the funkiest, Fiesta is better than the Corsa, dunno about the Toyota.

But as GJP says, if you can stretch to a Focus, get that – nice to drive, more room in the boot etc., not expensive (C30 ish?) and absolutely reliable (I had the old model for 7 years and it never cost me a penny in garage bills).

a bunch of self-serving greedy bastards only intent on helping themselves.

Call that Democracy?

No, which is why union power needed pegging back a bit.

Oh wait, that’s not what you meant is it?

Much as adobe irritates me, foxit’s blurred text rendering and inability to work with hyperlinks makes it rather useless to me…

RudeBoy – the closure of the pits and the ‘dash for gas’ for electricity production enabled Britain to meet its CO2 targets in the 90s.

My view is there were lefties up for a fight in the 80s who backed an industry that the same people now blame for destroying the planet. Cognitive dissonance anyone?

It’s good to see that most people still have knee jerk reactions that haven’t changed in over 20 years as soon as you mention Thatch or King Arthur.

In a desperate attempt to move things on, I wonder how many of the people who were in support of the miners in the 80s are in support of the climate protestors now?

Presumably “loss of controll” covers thing slike over enthusiastic cornering, driving too quick in the wet, etc etc, i.e. stuf that wouldn’t happen at lower speeds.

All things that have nothing to do with the speed limit.

Unless you are advocating driving at the same speed at all times. Which would explain the people who you see doing 40mph all the way over the snake despite the 50 signs then carrying on at 40mph in Glossop despite the 30 signs.

A better law would be to ban sat navs IMHO – the modern day equivalent of the flat cap, when you see the lit up screen in the car in front you just know they aren’t looking where they are going never mind having the faintest inkling what their mirrors are for.

Bring back the man walking in front with a red flag, it’s the way forward!

Seriously though, I don’t see how making overtaking more likely is going to contribute to safety.

of course, yes, forgot about strines – can be very nice to sit outside of an evening ;-)

both are fine, ladybower especially welcoming to muddy bikers – and bradfield ales (farmer’s blonde and farmer’s bitter) are excellent

nearest other option would be in bamford I suppose which is an easy warm down road ride

she is thinking of buying another house for a few years as an investment.

Seems to me that’s the kind of thing that got us into this mess…

I remember walking through 4ft drifts to the post office to get my five 1/2 penny sweets and a comic. Oh how things have changed!

Curly Wurlys were bigger too. And Wagon Wheels the size of your face!

anything by Iain banks.. complicity/waspfactory/dead babies are my favourites

Dead Babies is by Martin Amis, think you mean Dead Air – which is Banks’ worst work IMHO…

In that vein…

Ian Banks – Complicity, Crow Road, Steep Approach to Garbadale
Will Self – Great Apes
Neil Gaiman – American Gods

Crow Road has the best opening line of any novel, ever, you can keep your truths universally acknowledged and best of times worst of times… ;-)

In a different vein but still a must read for all humans…

Philip Pullman – His Dark Materials (trilogy – pity the film of the first part was pants)

My Tag F1 cost £150 I think – it’s still going strong 15 years later (on about the 8th strap). Worn for mountain biking, snowboard/skiiing, surfing, etc. etc.

So it’s worth paying for something that will last, but thousands for jewellery on your wrist? Bonkers. Mind you I hate all jewellery.

You could go the wiki route, or you could also consider using googlesites – obviously this stores info off site so you need to think about security issues but if you’re really just after something relatively basic but hassle free which people can update easily then it might be ideal.

Jake Palfrey, ex CBBC Newsround presenter child who did the Olympics. Has one of those faces you want to slap.

Got to be better than Count Von Count though…

not always possible to use the latest and best stuff on NHS patients

What’s to stop you doing checkups etc. for your NHS patients and if they need a filling offering them the option of doing it via the NHS or privately if they prefer say the white fillings?

I had no trouble finding an nhs dentist in sheffield a couple of years ago despite scare stories in the media…

sambas are great for the pub but not much grip on indoor courts IMHO, I use badminton shoes

south loop wasn’t open when I was up there in sep, but have to say the final descent of the north loop was superb fun (on a hired hard tail and despite my hangover from wedding reception night before)

whether it’s worth a long trip if you’re not in the area anyway I don’t know, but if you’re going up to the lakes in any case give it a go

2nd potdog’s soup recommendation!

Just use some common sense about it – as others have said, most bridleways are pretty busy with walkers and other bikers so the likelihood is someone would find you unless you went to a less busy spot at the wrong time of day. For example I once set off fairly late to do stanage and back and got a puncture coming down stanage plantation as the light was fading. Took me ages to sort it out in the gloom of the wooded section and then fortunately got back to the road before it was properly dark (no lights, dur). I remember thinking at the time that I was clearly the last person to come down that track that day and if I’d broken my leg I could be in difficulty – but during the day a climber or walker or biker would have been along every few minutes.

Do take a phone though…

For example, if I had thought of Google, I wouldn’t expect to pay someone 50% of proceeds just for coding it. I would rather pay a contractor 5% as a project.

Oh dear. If you weren’t a “code monkey” you wouldn’t have thought of google in the first place. Like most good inventions it was not the result of some marketing droid’s fevered imagination.

History of google

Well the route from Hunters Bar out through the parks is basically off road 3 miles to the Peak District, you just have one mile or so from the station to Hunters Bar on road. There’s no canal path or similar, but there is 300 metres or so of seperated cycle path alongside and then crossing under the inner ring road.

Nothing cheeky in willyboy’s map – and matt’t map is on road (A57 mostly, so would be route ‘in’).

This might help with roads around the city centre etc.

sheffield council cycle maps page

Matt – your ‘quick’ road route (Glossop Rd, Manchester Rd, Sandygate Rd) looks more knackering than the much flatter (then one steep climb at end) route through the parks! ;-)

Ecclesall Rd to Hunters Bar (one mile) then out through the parks and up porter clough. Then either short road section to redmires or along to ringinglow and over houndkirk to fox house – depends where you want to be next.

See VB Dark Peak book for route from hunters bar (sheffield city links), also there’s a hope to sheff route, do that backwards?

They hassled me for money that I’d already paid to my ex for months, there was nothing either of us could to stop them they are so incompetent. It seems there is a department for sorting out mistakes they have made and another department for collecting money with menaces. The two do not speak to each other. And both are behind all the time and so all delays are of the order of two or three months. The only way to sort it out was to agree to pay the money that I didn’t owe at some minimum weekly rate, then I went to the back of the queue and so by the time they got around to actually implementing that the other department had come back to life and realised there was no money to collect. No apology ever came.

The joke was I was paying more to my ex than they said I should be anyway…

my lad has had a bad knee so just hoping to get at least a day’s skiing in to see how it holds up, no point booking a holiday abroad if he skis one day and can’t move day after. will be happy to spend 2nd day looking round at scenery etc. if necessary – but definitely would prefer to get some skiiing done to make it worth the 6 or 7 hour each way drive from sheff

looked at that ski scotland web site, looks like glenshee is only one you can book skis and boots in advance from? don’t fancy turning up to nevis range and not getting any equipment (they say they expect to be busy as it’s half term). Are there other hire shops in fort william town?

was gona buy the os for sheffield and huddersfield

I’d go for the OL1 (dark peak) and OL24 (white peak) maps.

Houndkirk was great last weekend – for once the green laning 4×4 drivers had done a service by packing the snow nicely.

simonfbarnes – Member

A website is a program.

as a programmer, I would disagree. The web server is a program, but the actual content may just be plain data, though in practice most pages will contain some interactive scripting, which IS a program of a kind. HTML and CSS are content description languages, a bit like a shopping list

OK, a non-trivial website is a piece of software.

A flat site of the type last seen in 1996 isn’t, I agree. But anything with a database backend, is.

Used to struggle to get my boss to understand this, when he wanted ‘just a website’ but it had to validate users, sell them stuff and maintain licence and financial records and expected it all to be knocked up in dreamweaver in a few days. And look nice (he’d obsess for hours about the background colour and answer no questions about what data we should collect about customers).

There’s a technical term for people like that…

I have never seen th epoint of side lights really, bit daft really.

They are for leaving on when you are parked at night. On German cars at least you can make them only come on the road side using the indicator stalk.

They’re not for driving with – my driving instructor always called them parking lights.

Rudeboy –

first of all, why should there be a why? Attempting to find meaning in the universe is a human activity, the universe doesn’t need a reason to exist. Unless you mean in the sense that if we weren’t here to see it it wouldn’t exist.

Secondly, God is no explanation at all. If God is the explanation for the existence of the universe, what is the explanation for the existence of God? It doesn’t move things on at all, it’s just a sleight of hand and for some reason half the population take their eye off the ball and think an explanation has been given, when it hasn’t.

Why is religion allowed in assembly anyway? Unless it is a specific faith school why do children still have this arcane religion rammed down their throats?

It’s not just ‘allowed’, it’s the law – schools must provide a religious assembly (thoughs kids can opt out with parental agreement).

The reason is that when the state school system was set up there were already a lot of church schools, and it was the quid pro quo for getting them into the state system.

OK here’s my summary:

People on the left have a belief that they have the moral high ground. Therefore anything they say is correct and other views can safely be ignored and if people disagree they may need to be coerced, for their own good (Monbiot fits very nicely into this mold).

New Labour however threw out some of the old lefist ideas in favour of pragmatism in all things, coupled with an almost touching attachment to managerialism , central control and management consultants.

What you are left with is a government that has no clear idea where it is going but really does believe that whatever it does and says must be right, by definition, and therefore cracks down on any dissent, first within the party and latterly within the country as a whole. So, civil liberties can be taken away or ignored because it is for our own good. What is in Labour’s interest is in the country’s interest, the two are conflated in the minds of many senior Labour politicians. The left wing ideals have been thrown away and all that remains is the authoritarianism.

They are past their sell by date.

there’s a starbucks near the bottom of the botanical gardens now isn’t there?

As Brown represents a Scottish constituency in a UK parliament that makes laws to govern England, while Scotland has its own parliament for Scottish matters (and Brown’s party doesn’t control that parliament), mentioning his Scottishness is perhaps very aposite…

I would have thought there were better reasons for removing her from our screens than whether she likened a tennis player’s hairdo to an out of date children’s toy or not, but if that’s what it takes…

> Whats the difference between a local aneasthetic with sedation and general?

Perhaps the difference is that general normally involves muscle relaxant so you can’t move. Which means that if they get the pain relief wrong and you wake up during the procedure, you’re pretty much mentally scarred for life.

Does he use the train? If so then he clearly could be using the bike to get from home to the station couldn’t he?

If he is worried, why doesn’t he just ask them?