have to agree with the guys saying the taste was not very good, I tried coffee and chocolate and never liked either so I never bought it again.

Isn't Cadbury's fairtrade now?

My bananas say they are fair trade from the Dominican Republic.

Mind you they were from Waitrose so according to Jon from Manchester I'm a middle class do gooder or something. Milk and eggs come from my local shop which gets them from a farm down the road – no fair trade branding, but the same principle (fair access to a market for the supplier rather than been beaten down on price constantly by a single large buyer with unfair and arguably anticompetitive practices).

Van der Graaf Generator

At a guess, are they named after a Van der Graaf generator? Cunning.

So there is no modern day equivalent of the video player that can record what is on screen? DO they all need their own feeds?

It's no different, VCRs had their own analog tuner just as the TV had it own analog tuner. Now you have a TV with a built in digital tuner, but you'll want a recorder with its own built in digital tuner. Apart from anything else, you need digital information to be recorded onto the hard disk. Think of the extra tuner on the TV as just being for those times when you want to watch a third programme while recording two other things (most PVRs will have two tuners, some can record two channels at once others you can only record one but watch another, or record while watching something recorded earlier, they can pretty much all pause live TV and let you watch out of sync – good way to skip advert breaks in films).

The Doors

10CC

Was going to report it immediately but there's no number for BT outside office hours in the book ;-)

I'll be phoning them tomorrow morning – on my (still working) phone!

Are prams legal? What about micro scooters? Roller blades? Space Hoppers?

I think we should be told…

Flatish trails cannock, thetford etc..take an xc hardtail and keep it in the big ring all day. take a 6" skill compensating lardy big and bimble along in body armor WTF do you expect?

I only have an 80mm travel XC hardtail and Cannock was still boring. Might as well ride around my local park.

+1 for FtD at Cannock.

Pretty poor thinking by the MPs not to realise that high pay would be less offensive than stupid expenses.

They thought we wouldn't find out though.

it kinda makes sense, i think…
i forget the numbers, but a lot of flights into/outof Heathrow are internal flights – people who buy a flight from Manchester to New York, only to discover that they'll be flying to Heathrow along the way.
so, in principle, this new rail link could reduce the number of flights into/outof Heathrow.

leaving aside the fact that whenever I've flown from Manchester to New York it's been direct, I am aware that you can fly from Manchester to heathrow, though I would rather change planes at Amsterdam, Paris, Atlanta, anywhere but heathrow… Ignoring all that, and the fact that I don't think you can fly from Birmingham to heathrow…

Wouldn't it be much better for londoners to have the option of flying from Birmingham, which a high speed rail link from central London to Birmingham airport gives? Then the airports outside the south east can expand and take the pressure off the likes of heathrow. Adding heathrow to the high speed rail would only encourage use of heathrow.

I don't understand the Tories position of wanting a London to Birmingham high speed line to go via Heathrow while at the same time being against Heathrow expansion. Surely the only reason for the line to go to Heathrow would be to encourage people to travel to Heathrow instead of flying from Birmingham or Manchester?

jontawn – you've got cougars on the brain!

We're all individuals!

Has google stopped showing Kew for all queries yet?

If so, here's The Ranmoor Inn – can be overrun with christians when the church over the road chucks out, but otherwise a fine local. Also has Bradfield ales… (amongst others)

At the moment I see no reason to get a 13 inch Pro over the new white Macbook. Is a silver body or a FireWire port that important to you?

Presumably it also works on the iPod Touch?

Yes, same OS. Only difference is lack of camera (not relevant), lack of GPS (can locate itself reasonably accurately via wifi) and lack of 3G (but again you connect to internet via wifi).

Given that they are also producing apps for Android and presumably browser applets for the dumber 'smart' phones too, it does make sense. I would imagine that there are quite a few people that don't own a computer that do own a phone that can connect to the internet.. smartphones aren't going to go away, they're only going to get cheaper and more commonplace (err, pervasive is the buzz word I think).

Although it does look like it's more to be seen doing something than actually sorting out some jobs. Perhaps if the government hadn't encouraged a sham economy based on the city of London's phantom profts and run down the real economy in the rest of the country we wouldn't be in such a sorry state anyway… but that's another thread.

Well I'm on the dole and writing iPhone apps to fill the time, where do I fit in?

Perhaps I should apply for a job at the DWP?

I must be getting old, 'cos whenever I see this I have to resist a parental type urge to pull their trousers up for them and tell them to get a belt.

Perhaps if everyone did this they'd stop doing it?

Surely when you're 19 any car is a good car?

He's probably too young to remember the Skoda jokes from the 80s anyway.

Not been part of an Agile set up, but I think Agile and it's ilk, and Prince are pretty much at the two extremes of management styles.

So, I'm right in thinking Prince is something used in very large (esp. public sector) projects that typically go over budget and deliver something so late that it is no longer much use because the world has moved on? Think I'll give it a miss then ;-)

Seriously though, if it's something that's only of interest in the public sector then it explains why I haven't heard of it much.

Is PRINCE2 worth doing? As an out of work IT type it appears I might be able to get some help toward training courses, but all the jobs I am seeing mention Agile these days, does PRINCE address Agile at all?

If you're on a Mac, you could give this a go;

http://www.funkypixels.com/

It's quite cheap and you can trial it for free. I should add my mate wrote it, but that doesn't make it bad ;-)

Never been to Nonnas (despite working on eccy road) and understand the customers verge on the pretentious but everything I've heard about the restaurant suggest it's a genuinely nice place owned by a lovely family. Why all the hate? (genuinely interested)

Rightly or wrongly the image is of a bunch of orange people sitting outside just so they can be seen looking at their own Porsches and Ferraris. If you've ever been to Wilmslow you'll get the idea.

Cox has an awesome job !

Almost a D:Ream job!

jealous, went to morzine 5 years ago… no trip this year due to joblesstrackworld… pah.

How far do you think you can get from a road in England? Its only a few miles in the wilds of Scotland.

The Cut Gate path is over 5 miles from any road at some points I think – I wouldn't want to be up there on my own with a broken leg as it starts getting dark at this time of year (there's snow on the tops in Derbyshire that's been there since before Christmas). I don't think the OP's question is odd at all.

I remember having a minor crash on an autumn evening on Stanage, no injuries and managed to get the bike working again, but I remember thinking then that if I'd hurt myself badly no-one would have found me until the morning, and I had no warm clothing. The fact that I was only 5 miles from the centre of Sheffield wouldn't have saved me from hypothermia. And wasn't someone rescued from a car hanging in a tree in a ravine by the A57 last year who'd been there for 2 days before being found?

All of which is not to say that I don't go out on my own, I do…

It's hilarious how religious people are so easily offended (or at least profess to be). Do they think their gods are as petty minded as they are?

Windows has now caught and passed Mac OS.

Having had to use DOS (sorry, err, Command Prompt, whatever) to diagnose why my son's Windows 7 computer wouldn't connect to the internet (it had helpfully remembered an incorrect DNS address) on the home wifi, I beg to differ…

Having someone proof read your writing is good for you. Take it like a man and ask for more ;-)

the gorillaz album was available yesterday streamed and today on xfm – nil points.

Not sure I understand your point. XFM is ok as well, if you could get it where I live I'd probably listen to it. It's like 6Music only not as good.

I've paid my licence fee and Radios 1, 2, and 3 are all complete wastes of bandwidth. 4, 5 and 6 on the other hand are quite good.

PSA, they're playing tracks from the new Gorillaz album (due out next week) on 6 music today…

They could stop turning stony bridleways into 8 foot wide smooth pedestrian motorways round here, that would save a few quid…

Cross the river into Canada?

A mate of mine used to have to go to a trade show in Detroit every year, apparently they usually went for beers over in Windsor in the evenings. Can't tell you anything myself though, I've only spent 4 hours in Detroit, in the airport, wishing I was in Seattle like I was meant to be.

What's steveh said. It's not near the pole, there's a good long flattish section first. Turn off left on the flagstone section that seems to go nowhere, after a dip and a right turn you reach a gap in the edge and then there's a sharp left and drop in on rocks followed by more slabs of rock going down toward the plantation followed by more flags, and it comes out by the car park. You'll more likely encounter climbers walking up to the edge rather than red socks types.

It's not "the" Jacob's ladder, but there are any number of paths that people locally refer to as Jacob's ladder, so some walkers might well call it that… though they are of course wrong ;-)

So basically, you were right first time I think, even though it does look like it goes nowhere at first glance. Carry on a bit and see, when you get to the left hand hairpin you should see the entire path going down to the plantation. And the walkers are also wrong about it being a footpath, it's definitely a bridleway.

FYI, Snake Pass and Cat and Fiddle both closed today…

Whenever I've tried running I've ended up killing myself and my legs are in agony for the next 3 or 4 days, plus my lower back tends to pack up. That's after maybe 20 minutes to half an hour. Any less and it doesn't seem worth the effort of getting changed and going out – I'm not even going to begin to get warmed up.

If you're reasonably fit in any case from cycling or whatever then you will find that your legs start to hurt well before you get tired if you're not used to running. This is what I found when I took up running a couple of years ago anyway. You need to keep doing the shorter runs for several weeks and then gradually increase the distance as your body gets used to it.

XFM?

If the government wanted to really make a difference, they'd allow Public transport vehicles to use red diesel.

Well said. This is such an obvious point I can't understand why it doesn't get mentioned more often. Farmers can use duty free diesel but buses and trains can't – can anyone make sense of that?

What tyres for hot air ballooning?