Bought an £800 TV from them a couple of years ago, they were the cheapest supplier I could find at the time for the model I wanted. Arrived 2 days after ordering so can't complain.

Previous shape Honda Civic Type-Rs

Definitely one for people who don't care about their car's image. Although maybe that's slightly cruel – I gather the current Civics are quite popular with air hostesses as well as grannies.

(And yes, I know it's actually a good car, but the OP's original point was about image).

official mpg figures should be taken with a pinch of salt?

True of any car. Our Cooper (currently delivering a load of rubish down the tip – like most cars you can get a surprising amount in with the seats down) will easily do 45mpg on a run, current Cooper S supposedly has much better economy that the old supercharged version. On the other hand you don't get that fantastic supercharger whine when you put your foot down (which I think may be the cause of many of the economy problems!).

Get the original supercharged Cooper S

Fantastic car to drive but they drink petrol like its going out of fashion. I remember when we traded ours in the dealer telling us he was getting less than 20mpg out of his demonstrator. We managed a bit more than that but not what you'd expect from a car that size even when driven gently.

You can't fit a golfing brolly flat in the boot of a mini

That's got to be a selling point – you may look like an estate agent but at least you won't be mistaken for a golfer! :-)

Depends on the colour. Mrs R used to have a Cooper S in "British racing green metallic" with a matching roof (i.e. not a white or black one) and people used to tell her it looked like a man's car. I believe its current owner is a bloke who uses it as his practical car as his other car's an Aston. On the other hand if you go for a pale blue metallic you are certainly a hairdresser. She currently has a red one that I'm not afraid to be seen in.

Don't know about bike helmets but my ski helmet became a weapon this year, was told I had to pack it in my checked luggage. Strange as I've been taking it as hand luggage for years, but you can't argue with them.

And make sure Windows firewall is on and isn't full of exceptions left by dodgy programmes. Don't be tempted to put any other firewall software on there unless you're sure what you're doing. Try shields-up to see if it's working.

If you've got iPhoto the imac should pick up any new photos as soon as you plug in the phone. If you haven't got iPhoto (and I thought it was free with all imacs) then try something like iphone explorer[/url].

Mrs R and I have been to Egypt about a dozen times. Obviously we like it or we wouldn't have gone back. Luxor and Aswan have some fascinating antiquities – Karnak if you can get there at a quiet time is stunning, valley of the kings is amazing once you get over the fact that the bits above ground look like a missile bunker complex, nothing quite like a drink in the old Cataract hotel in Aswan overlooking the Nile cataracts, some of the best snorkling and diving in the world in the red sea etc etc. The locals are generally very friendly in our experience. We've also had the armed police/army experience, had earthquakes, been stranded in a broken down bus in the desert and flown in the shakiest 737 I've ever seen from Aswan to Abu Simbel – the pilot got a round of applause when we landed. This is all part of what makes holidays interesting. But I wouldn't rate it as a place to take children – they'll be hot and bored most of the time, or they'll play in a pool or the sea and get sunburnt in which case you might as well have gone to Brighton and avoided the sunburn.

Microsoft Security Essentials. Free, works as well as anything else, and less likely than most to mess up your PC.

Clubber – good point, I tend to forget that I seem to be the only person in the country who still pays for prescriptions.

Cut paracetamol from the list of drugs available on prescription

Can't see how this saves money. Prescription cost (in England at least) is £7.20 (i think), cost of a packet of paracetamol about 5p. Looks like a money maker to me! :-) A bit like a drug I take that costs £1 or so but I have to pay £7.20 on prescription – my additional personal subsidy to the NHS.

Edit – others got there first – my, you lot have fast fingers.

iTunes will do it for you – select the tracks(s), right click, create mp3 version. Had to do it for my car too.

Have worked out there a couple of times, but always staying in hotels – usually near the old airport. Traffic is dreadful – expect it to take a long time to get anywhere – if you've got a driver they'll know that and allow for it. Don't be surprised if your driver takes you down some unexpected short cuts to avoid the traffic – unsurfaced roads, through slums etc. It's a good way of seeing the place… Now that they've put all the tuk-tuks on propane the atmosphere's breathable – the whole place used to have a blue-ish smog of badly maintained 2-stroke exhausts.

The difference between the wealthy and the poor takes some getting used to – if you think UK's unequal you've seen nothing.

Food is great if you like a curry. NASA bar in MG road is a bizarre experience (if it's still there). I think it's still monsoon out there – prepare for serious random downpours but at least afterwards the streets are nice and clean. The rest of the time it gets pretty hot. But generally an interesting place to be – enjoy!

are these multi-car policies any good?

Not quite the same thing, but I got a big discount from Churchill because Mrs R also has her car insured with them. Other companies may do the same so if you've got more than one car I'd guess it's worth trying this.

my cover is paid for by work so no idea what it is

Should be on your P11D as a taxable benefit. Mine works out at about £500 pa but that's after a large organisation negotiated it for thousands of people so YMMV.

lol- or she was trying to pick me up! :-)

This morning I was about to put my stuff on the conveyor belt at a till in Tesco when one of the staff asked if I'd like to use the self-service scanner in the next row. I thought this must be part of an initiative to encourage people to use them but she put the self-scanner into a staff-operated mode and scanned everything for me and put it in my bag, then put it back into self-scan mode. Very good service but it sort of made me wonder where the savings are. :?

surely Babybel is a "real cheese"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babybel

"Babybel is a processed cheese that is easily recognizable due to its distinctive red wax"

EDIT: not that Wikipedia is necessarily correct, of course! :-)

They seem to have a UK site now – http://www.magicshineuk.co.uk/index.php. Prices look a bit steep compared to last year when I bought mine – I paid £50, they have it reduced from £119 to £79 8O

put safty caps on them all

Really?[/url]

Whilst STW is the definitive source for all information, I find the UK white goods forums helpful for this sort of problem. They'll probably also be able to tell you whether you really need to replace the whole drum…

Ok – so what is mtb disc brake cleaner made of?

This?

A bit of googling found this contents list for some car brake cleaner which is probably the nearest I've found to a definitive answer. It seems to consist of naptha (petroleum), acetone and 2-Methyl-1-propanol aka isobutyl alcohol. Nothing there that I'd worry about too much. Would probably make a good flame thrower though.

hydrocarbon product … so oil

Methane – hydrocarbon product – so oil? :roll:

You realise the temperatures car brakes get up to

Try oiling your car brakes, see what temperature they get up to. No don't – it may be me that you crash into.

I've used Halfords car brake cleaner and Comma (?) and had no problem. I've tried spraying some on glass and letting it evapourate and there's no residue. I suspect this is an urban myth, and tbh I'd be more worried about oil residue on my car brakes than on my bike brakes. It's also sold as clutch cleaner. Oiled clutch, anyone?

Messiah on a velocipede

I like that…

All part of Carphone Warehouse now. No doubt others will get bought up and assimilated soon, no small ISP is safe.

I'm using AOL, which is gradually being merged into Talk Talk along with Tiscali. It used to be crap and expensive until they started harmonising their systems and now after much complaining to them and theatening to change suppliers its ok (usually gives me speeds limited by the connection, not the ISP) and slightly cheaper than most. Never had it drop the connection except on a couple of occasions when their authentication servers went down. Might be worth having a good moan at them before you go to the hassle of moving?

6805-2RS or 61805-2RS. The 2RS bit is important!

I suspect the problem with the Hope is that it doesn't have the plastic top-hat so the crank axle bears directly against the bearing so tolerances have to be tighter. If you stick with Shimano/Superstar etc which have the plastic bit then I'd guess you're ok, can't see how it could get stuck as you could always destroy the plastic thing to get it out!

If it helps, I'm currently using an FSA Afterburner with a Superstar BB because I had it lying around when the FSA MegaExo BB that came with it finished its short life (about 6 months, they are truly rubbish). According to the FSA web site Moto and Afterburner can use the same BB (e.g. this) so I would deduce that you could use any standard HTII BB despite what Hope say.

There are some useful reviews of socket covers here – link – suprised no-one's linked to it already !

Edit: although I see that Mastiles-f has already used one of their pictures!

My optician told me that the performance of the transition lenses improves with use, so you may find they go darker then that after a while. Mine go so dark that when I'm skiing I often have to take them off and use ordinary sunglasses instead.

On the down side they're no use for driving – the windscreen blocks the UV that makes them go dark. 8)

We keep some pet wipes handy for when they do this – our cat came back yesterday absolutely covered in some sort of brown dust and had to be cleaned for his own sake and before he messed up the furniture. As above, best to get it off before they groom themselves particularly if you don't know what it is.

I used to live next to a railway line and had triple glazing on the bedroom window to keep the noise out. You need a big air gap to get any meaningful reduction in noise so mine was effectively secondary glazing in addition to a standard sealed unit. It worked ok. People living in the same area often also had air con in the bedroom as obviously if you sleep with the window open the soundproofing is somewhat limited!

these modern trends

I've been using an Airborne Ti post (essentially the same as the VN but in their previous incarnation) for the last 6 years. Does that make me ahead of the trend or has it just gone out of fashion and come back? :-)

It's hard to say how much difference it makes as a lot depends on how much give your saddle has. Most impressive thing to me is that I'm excessively heavy and I still haven't managed to break it. Mine is in its third bike and it's never creaked or got stuck despite not being greased. As Wippersnapper said it's a pain to get the saddle rails in but once it's there it's fine.

…the old ones where they were, perhaps, not expecting some of the flaws to show through as others have said

The "old ones" were made to be projected on large screens using high quality film stock. I suspect this is more to do with a general increase in film budgets rather than anything to do with tiddly "high-def" TV screens.

ScottChegg – where was the crack? I've examined mine and can't find anything obvious…

My Ti456 started creaking a couple of weeks ago, can't for the life of me figure out what it is – tried replacing the BB, removed & refitted seat-post, saddle, forks, checked chainring bolts, pedals, headset, front mech, cables etc. If I flex the frame by pushing on the forks I can feel something creaking but as someone said above the noise travels through the frame so it's impossible to locate the source. Only solution so far is to turn my iPod up. I wouldn't worry about it if it weren't for the fact that the noise is very similar to that made by my last Ti frame just before it cracked beyond repair.