The primary factor in choosing a saddle, for me at least, is the distance between the sit bones. Measure that then search for a range of saddles that cater to that width. Then other factors come into play such as shape, padding, depth of seat cut-out, durability, etc.

I’ve got two Selle SMPs, one on mtb and one on road bike. The one on my road bike has carbon rails and less padding than the mtb saddle. Reason for that is I tend to apply less pressure on the saddle and more through my legs when road riding.

They are both fairly (the road saddle very!) uncomfortable when worn without padded lycra shorts. With the shorts on they are fine. They both curve up a bit at the front so it’s important you set it with the correct angle so it doesn’t press into your balls. You do want your sit bones on the padded area so ensure the saddle isn’t too far back.

It took me a little while to get used to them but I’ve had them both for about six years now and done thousands of miles on them.

Take an allen key with you when you’re out riding and experiment with different positions during the ride. It’ll all be in vain though if the width of the saddle isn’t right for you.

Yes please. Tried making these. Bloody difficult with a hack saw and drill. Eventually settled on some Crank Bros but could definitely use some more.

I was looking at Gloworm, Xeccon Zeta 1600, Lupine Blika R and the Exposure Diablo Sync Mk2. I really wanted a remote for a head torch having owned an Exposure Diablo 7 which didn’t have a remote but I liked the thought of not taking my hands off the bars to change settings. I also wanted to refine the modes so I liked the idea of an app to customise the settings.

I bought the Exposure and thought it was well made but the battery ran out too quickly. I may not have had the optimum settings but I really wasn’t impressed with the remote which although connected and functioned responsively is not built with usability in mind. It’s got tiny little buttons and just looks like not much effort or thought went into the design. I didn’t like the cheapness of the button click either. Exposure’s app also sends analytics data to Google so I sent the light back for those two reasons.

I sold my old Exposure Diablo and a Silva Trail running light and got the Lupine Blika R. It’s amazing. It replaces both of those lights, has amazing control over the settings, a dual switch remote with sensibly sized buttons. The app is clean, well designed and sends no data to third parties. The battery is a sensible capacity. The light even has a stealth mode and it’s just incredibly well designed both mechanically and electronically. It is really expensive though but better than any light I’ve owned in the past. I bought the additional heatsink and have a spare battery but because of the control I have over the settings and ease of mode change via the remote one battery lasts about four 15 mile off-road spins so I’ve not needed the spare. I have three remotes one for each bike and one zip tied around the strap of my G-Shock watch. Yeh I spent shit loads but I got carried away after playing with it. The battery can be used as a USB power bank if need be. It’s my ideal bikepacking light for sure.

I had the first edition Rimes and wore them to shreds.
If I were looking for a similar shoe again then these Pearl Izumi X-ALP Elevates would be on my list.

I can’t answer your question but I briefly started a course run by a Danish university about solar panels and part of that course went into the lifecycle of solar panels.

So design with the understanding that all products have a finite lifespan seems to be ingrained in some aspects of technology but not others. Obviously it needs to be ingrained into all technologies, but costs dictate research into recycling of the stuff these businesses manufacture with their primary target being to release their crap onto the market to make money.

There’s no excuse for large profitable companies such as Siemens, Bosch, Honda, etc. They should all have a product lifecycle but then they’d be admitting to the fallibility of the shit that they produce. They need to be straight up with people. We all know stuff doesn’t last indefinitely. These businesses need to reassure us that they have a system in place, when it eventually terminally fails, in order to extract the materials from their failed product and get those materials back in productive use. The higher percentage of said product the better. Government legislation is so weak in this area.

I used to enjoy listening to him back around 2016 or so…around when Moyes left Radio 1 and for a few years after…but Radio 6 MUSIC I thought was always about MUSIC primarily and so I tuned in to listen to the leftfield type music that they’d play back then. However it seems to have become more mainstream, more talk too. So for talk I listen to podcasts and for music I’m listening to Radio Paradise, switching between their four different channels…Eclectic, Main, Mellow and Rock. Really impressed with Radio Paradise as they have very high quality lossless streams and a really good mix of music. Sorry who were we talking about again?

Wireless charging is really inefficient. I was thinking of charging my phone, from my bicycle dynamo hub, using wireless charging so as not to expose any connectors to the elements. Most of the energy is lost to heat. So, you have to question where would the extra capacity come from in order to provide the energy required to overcome those losses.
Far more efficient to have a direct connection.

Tough call between the Holyland MTB Challenge, the Transcon Race, the Tour Aotearoa or the Japanese Odyssey. Mostly very difficult (perhaps the Tour Aotearoa not so much) and very different from one another. The Holyland MTB Challenge was the one that kicked it off for me being my first bikepacking event, a true baptism of fire cycling through 40 degree heat in the Negev Desert. I’d say that was probably my favourite in retrospect due to how it made me feel about myself, i.e. more confident. My longest non-stop ride of over 390 miles completed as a DIY AAA audax in just over 25 hours beats any of those events for statistics. That was a very hilly (~28000ft) circuit of the South East of England ridden without stopping for sleep, although I took my bivvi just in case. I enjoyed every minute of it too. 2017 seems such a long time ago.

Despite having ordered some winter boots for muddy hike-a-bike sessions, on road I swear by these..

Pearl Izumi Pro Amfib Wxb Waterproof Shoe Cover

They join at the back with full length velcro so there’s a bit more flexibility than with a zip. Zips fail plus they can bite into the skin.
They are insulated and waterproof, the cuff is tall and the sole is made from very durable fabric similar to dyneema. They go on and off very quickly which I liked for commuting and fit over my xc shoes.
I used to have Endura neoprene ones which were good, they’re quite flexible, but I still prefer the Pearl Izumis. They’re about 8 years old now and I still wear them for the type of rides where I’m unlikely to need to walk with the bike.
Size 45 shoe and I wear XXL overshoes.

Yep Q-Factor’s for me a big deal, even off-road, and gravel’s more on-road stylistically than off-road. I definitely don’t see an e-bike in my near future and I’ve recently sold some X01 cranks and replaced with XX1 (not Eagle) for my MTB and the difference is night and day. That’s a Q-Factor difference of 12mm though, i.e, dropping from 168mm to 156mm so not ~6mm like they’re talking about here.

Speed Controller

So glad I did all my bike buying between 2014 and 2015. They’re both still perfect for my needs and cannot see any reason to upgrade and especially not during this period of inflated prices. Back in 2015 the pound was strong and I took advantage of it. The Euro was at the lowest it had been against the pound for a long time and I’d imported both frames and many of the components from abroad; China, Belgium, Italy and Germany. One of the bikes I bought then for around £2000 its equivalent is almost £7000 now. Just bonkers.

There’ll be a process to claim back refunds of duplicated Vat.

If the seller in Europe charges (EU)VAT then presumably the buyer in the UK will need to contact the seller to get the refund. The buyer may need to provide evidence of the (UK)VAT being charged to them (by the courier) to help explain to the European seller that VAT charges have been duplicated.

If the courier charges (UK)VAT on top of the price of the goods+(EU)VAT then that’ll be a ball ache to sort out. The buyer would then not only need to contact the seller to claim a refund of the (EU)VAT and request an updated invoice, but the buyer would then need to claim a refund off HMRC of the extra (UK)VAT that had been paid on the goods+(EU)Vat. The original invoice from the seller plus the invoice from the courier will be the evidence required.

I’m no authority on this but these would be the steps I’d attempt to follow.

The duty and courier charge are things that everyone that has purchased goods from outside the EU pre-Brexit should be used to anyway but with the slight variation on duty dependent on the goods origin of manufacture.

That buyer above who claims to have received goods having not paid any VAT should (I hope) receive a letter in the post from Parcelforce demanding the UKVAT is to be paid.

@33tango

No they didn’t. I just thought they looked like a weak design assuming they’d fail sooner rather than later. I hate poor design. It’s why I hate my bloody SP dynamo hub…another crap design that needs to go back to Taiwan whenever the bearings fail.

I ordered these exact boots a couple of weeks ago and sent them back to CRC. I said in a thread here just afterwards that the lacing appeared to be a poor design. All the leverage and upwards pressure from your foot is held on that one lace.

Your new Nortwaves are not fitted with BOA.

That is an impressive level of pendantry, especially considering most on here will know what boa means, and I imagine very few have heard of SLW2.

How’s that pedantry? Does Northwave have a lifetime guarantee with their SLW2 dials? Does BOA have that annoying little catch that requires two hands to release the tension? Those are two important factors that differentiate BOA from SLW2, other than SLW2 being really hard to say quickly.

My solution that works very well is to self-host Piwigo, I own a domain name and use a third party host although it could easily be brought in-house.

So Piwigo provides all the capabilities of most photo hosting sites. Then, in order to upload there’s a number of choices but I’ve settled on using digiKam installed on my computer. Through this application I can export photos to my Piwigo application. DigiKam has a setting where I can set the JPEG quality to whatever percentage aswell as the dimensions of the jpeg file. This setting is saved for all subsequent photos making things very quick or can be changed for each upload.

If you’re using RAW then those files may need conversion first but I only take pictures in Jpeg format. I expect digkam can convert those too.

I then log in to Piwigo, create a folder for the new photos and the process of resizing and uploading the photos takes seconds.

Sharing the URL to you photo(s) is simple using a plugin. This plugin provides a number of different pre-defined url links, e.g. photos that are clickable links to your shared gallery, or embedded photos without clickable links but have black borders.

I use it for hosting my eBay sales mainly. I can advertise my items using more photos than possible through simply using eBay on its own.

It’s learning how to self-host Piwigo and then customise the plugins and then learn digKam which takes time but the pay off is very much worth it not least for feeling more empowered.

You may want a simple solution, if so this ain’t for you if you don’t like a learning curve but if you’re on furlough or old and retired then certainly worth exploring.

P.S. There is a nice clean Piwigo gallery app for Android too so that you can view your uploads.

@NorthCountryBoy If you’re size 10 (as I am ) I would 100% advise you to go for size 46 in those Northwaves. The more enclosed air you have around your feet then the more air there is to warm up. Additionally you’ll be able to fit thicker socks on which since it’s winter why would you not? I didn’t test the shoes on my bike so couldn’t advise on the amount of heel lift although the ‘toe stand test’ didn’t show too much but this kind of test illustrates where the forces are on the shoe which takes me onto the next point.

Durability. The reel cord has only one cord line between the shoe flap and the dial whereas many shoes have two so I could see that being a point of failure.

Also consider foot width as Northwaves aren’t like Lake, for example, who cater for wide feet. Narrow shoes can ruin a ride.

Despite what many people are saying I didn’t find it too much of a struggle to get my feet in them. Loosen the cord fully and my feet went in no problem. The Neoprene cuff is stretchy enough.

Received some Northwave Celsius boots today. Size 10 feet so ordered EU46. Tried them on with thick winter socks and they felt sufficiently roomy in both width and height. Quite comfortable to be honest and I like a wide last such as my Lakes have.

But I’m sending them back for two reasons. I prefer the Boa system a) because they’re free to replace when they break and b) because they’re less fiddly than Northwaves’ dials. That little catch to unlock annoyed me after less than 5 minutes of use.

The second reason is I feel that the neoprene ankle gaitor isn’t tall enough. I bought them thinking the gaitors would fit under my leggings but they’re too short, significantly shorter than the Pearl Izumi WXB shoe covers that I currently use on the road. I think I’ll go for the Specialized Defrosters next but not until the summer when they should have dropped in price. For off-road I’ll stick to using waterproof socks with my summer shoes for the time being.

My favourite shoe brand Lake haven’t really dialled the lightweight winter boot yet (not waterproof) although their heavier boots which, although having just sold a pair, are great.

I’ve gone through over 10 SP dynamo hubs over the years. I have two bikes and three SP 15mm dyno hubs. Every year one gets replaced. Started off with a 9mm and that failed quickly. Progressed onto the 15mm ones and eventually replaced all three of the first iterations and currently have three of the 2nd iteration where SP had bulked up one side slightly.

I think one of the problems is the larger axle means reduced size bearings bearings so they’ll be less reliable.The Sons may use higher quality bearings but they benefit from a breather tube to equalise the pressure inside the hub when the temperature drops. This prevents moist air being pulled in through the bearings which can cause them to seize up. This happened on at least one occasion as my bike was sitting in an unheated outhouse over winter. Tried riding in spring and the front wheel didn’t move. Almost brand new hub too. Flipping pain respoking the wheels and sending the hub back to Taiwan.

Those Kasai hubs have only solved half the problem. It’s good that the wheels don’t need to be disassembled but does the internal unit just get thrown in the bin or do they have a replacement service? If so then that’s a step forward for sure but I’d still like to be able to replace the bearings myself and defintely wouldn’t want to chuck the guts away each time a bearing wears. They need to publish a how-to on bearing replacement before I’d consider buying. Also early days so who knows what the quality is like. The fact you can screw the guts out might mean it could work itself loose or play could develop.

Re the axle reducer from 15mm to 12mm Kasai have one of those on that site too. And that dyno light looks comparable to the revo but with a 5v charger which is interesting. Any rear light output?

Igaro’s dyno light will have a road ficussed beam, an integrated charger with a huge capacitor and Bluetooth with loads of customised options. sounds like it could be excellent if expensive.

Build your own. You’d get a powerful system for less money.

Just discovered FitoTrack can import multiple GPX files so it’s feasible to request a full Strava data request. They provide you with all your old rides as separate GPX files which can then be imported into FitoTrack if you so wish. Seems pretty full of features imo. Nice free and clean app too with no pinging of strange IP addresses, other than Openstreetmap but that’s obviously to get the map tiles to show where you are.

Opentracks if you’re on Android., It’s actually pretty good.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.dennisguse.opentracks/

You won’t be uploading your tracks to a third party website; instead storing them locally. You can export all rides to a .kmz backup file and then share this back up to your home computer.
There’ll be no social aspect to it though.

FitoTrack’s another one very similar to that above. Offers a visual display of where you are. There are more settings on it though so it offers more features and more of a learning curve.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.tadris.fitness/

Forgot to mention that’s a 3-way on-on-on switch. So…just light (for climbing mountains at night time), just charger (for day time when I want to boost charge my phone), and both light and charger (for around 14mph and above constant speeds)

Oops pics are a bit big.

That’s an Igaro D1 which has a male and a female DC connector soldered and then epoxied to the regulator casing. That’s inside the steerer tube. There’s two leads to the switch; unregulated and a regulated lead. The switch controls the power to those two outputs. One charges USB devices and the other goes straight to my dynamo light (a Revo). I did try the Sinewave Beacon on my MTB but as a dynamo light I didn’t like it and think the Revo’s much better.

Garry_Lager
Full Member

…are the university reducing your actual mark for the assignment by 11% or the weighting of it? ie is it an actual assessment that has created this problem, you didn’t do as well as you had hoped on a particular module, or is the assessment fine but you are being disadvantaged by how it is being processed in the covid system they are using to calculate a final mark?

It’s a second year module which does count towards my final degree qualification and for which I completed all three assignments. Those three assignments were worth 50% of the overall module grade with the exam providing the remaining 50% of the overall grade. I averaged 94% over the three assignments. Distinctions are 85% and above. The university gave me an overall grade of 83% because I didn’t take the exam. During the peak of the pandemic and prior to submitting the final assignment the option was provided to take the exam later in the year, which I forfeited as then I would have had to go through the summer and then take it at the same time as starting the next couple of modules for that year (I’m a part time student who also works).
I’ve read (from third parties) that the university used the results of three years of previous cohorts exam results to determine the results of those that didn’t take the exam.

Boeing E-3B Sentry flying over the South East now

Paisley Freight used APC Overnight when I sent a bike off about a week ago. Collected on Friday morning, delivered Monday morning. Very pleased with that for £27 I think it was. The label said ‘do not collect if bike is not boxed’. Your bike must be boxed and they do provide an extra service to provide you with a box, but it almost doubles the overall courier costs.

I don’t know which way round is Euro or US to be honest even though I’ve been riding for many years! I have front brake right hand lever on my MTB and front brake left hand lever on my road bike and I can switch over with out thinking about it. Maybe a bit odd but there we go.

Are you thrifty? Who knows what the future holds regarding the economy…

Solution: Upgrade your bike with minimal cash to 1×11, perhaps even buying second hand parts.

Do you have loads of money and are confident the state of the economy won’t affect you?

Solution: Buy a new bike

The difference in expenditure sounds pretty large to be honest. Why not just sell your bike and not replace it? Use what you have left over. You’ll have more free space (this is both cathartic and practical as has already been discussed), less possessions, a bit more money (if you sell your bike).

Whichever pill you decide to take…Good luck

My Tobishos are great. I got them from http://www.tetsufuku.com a few years back but the price has increased a bit .
Felcos are excellent but I prefer Tobishos because there’s no annoying little thumb catch that I’ve accidentally knocked in the past which then locks the secateurs. The catch on the Tobishos is sprung loaded and located at the end of the secateurs so when I pull it out of the holster in one movement I can also unlock them by rubbing the catch against my hip, and likewise when dropping them back into the holster, grip the secateurs to close, knock the catch against hip which springs back and locks the secateurs and then pop back into the holster. This is good when switching between different tools whilst thinning out a shrub for example. I might be using a folding saw or short handled loppers and interchanging between the tools quickly keeps the job flowing along nicely.
Definitely recommend getting a holster whichever secateurs you get as it keeps them to hand and reduces chances of losing them. I have a double holster containing secateurs and a folding saw.

eBay
Gumtree / Shplock
Local Facebook Group
Local Charity shops
FreeCycle / Freegle
Recycle Bin
Local Tip / Black Bin

..in that order.

The thing is recognising there’s a hoarding problem and responding to it as it takes time to sell on eBay.

Thanks all. Went for the cheepy cheap option.

Only £23 too. I’m trying to get as many functions for my budget whilst fulfilling the essential criteria. If there’s no other options thrown into the hat then that’s the one I’ll get.

Last time I saw one was in Fukuoka city in 2016 when a Japanese girl crossed my path on one. I was wobbling over a pedestrian crossing on my bike with a bike box under one arm. I thought back then that they’d become a bit of a hipster ride.

Firefox in its default settings is crap. However, it is still the best browser that exists in my opinion. The reason is that it has a lot of flexibility under the hood.

Type in about:config into the address bar and that is where all the settings can be changed. The amount of telemetry your browser sends to remote servers is astonishing. Type in ‘telemetry’ into the search within the about:config page. Outgoing telemetry can easily be illustrated by using an application such as Net Activity Viewer (linux only) or Netguard (Android). You can disable much of this.

You can customise the browser to be very secure using a file called user.js which is then placed into the user profile folder (desktop version). You can have multiple profiles with varying degrees of security that can be clicked open when you choose to so you can have multiple browser windows open all treated as separate sessions, so not sharing cookie data, etc.

However, Mozilla are going to be removing access to the about:config facility in an future version so we need even more choice unfortunately. This seems to be far and few between.

Even Brave Browser which many proclaim to be secure sends out loads of telemetry, or at least it did when I last experimented with it.

Right now Firefox secured using the settings within about:config is the best browser. Better than ungoogled Chromium.

How do you think you might cope when someone jumps in front of your train?

Can you maintain attention for long periods of time doing repetitive tasks?

I’m just lucky I don’t have the dependants

That’s not luck, that’s skill!

There is zero enjoyment to be derived from money if it’s sat in an account somewhere

£20,000 credit is better than £20,000 debt. That’s where I derive pleasure from having money sat in the account. My only concern would be having money losing value due to inflation, I don’t need to make large returns because I’m not that materialistic. So if I were you I’d find somewhere where your money doesn’t lose value from inflation…but then I’m not you so you could spend it on a once ion a lifetime experience (learn to fly for instance)…or find a deserving charity…or employ someone for a year to pick up litter as a part time job in your local area, amongst a huge array of other options.

You can select all the rides (in your list) and have them appear all on a map to edit or view all at once. It’s pretty complex so without providing all the instructions for you you’d need to explore further into the sites’ capabilities.

The reason I like to download a gpx file is to use it within an app on my phone, or on a garmin gps device to use offline where there’s no phone signal. Downloading a gpx file is free but if you want a gpx file with embedded POIs such as cafe stops en route then that facility needs to be paid for via the subscription.

I’ll provide a screen dump as evidence of my claim later but need to go out now.