I guess hardtails have a place for beardy, map holder types pounding the bridle ways for hours on end. You, know they type who can’t ride bikes fast enough to get any benefit from FS anyway.

I’m convinced he’s either dishonest or incompetent. And I’m leaning towards the former.

I’m leaning towards both.

It’s not digital audio at this level, it’s data, and it’s either valid or corrupt

Bit fatigue is a well known phenomena, hence the need for Bit Recycling

Inside your computer are millions of little bits. Each one of those bits can be a one or a zero and as your computer runs programs each one of these bits changes its state, often thousands of times every second.
Understandably, this puts a lot of pressure on your bits and, after a period of time, some of your bits may start to wear out. At first your bits become a little bit cranky and don’t change quite as quickly and after much use they may become worn out on the edges.
The Bit Recycler is designed to reconstitute your bits, making sure that your bits are always in top shape.

Was going to enter this until I saw the middle picture

Don’t be put off, its only a tiny bit (30 yards?) of the course which is basically out along the beach and back on singletrack. Its the mixture of the two that makes it interesting.

A few ‘damp patches’ last year, but a great event. Not many places where you can see an echelon containing a CX bike, an MTB and a fat bike.
A bit of this

A bit of that

A bit of the other

I think its a bad idea to scrap masters as it takes a lot of the fun out of it.

Wait ten years and it will become clearer. Either you’re a Vet your not. I didn’t get my 1st cat until I was 33, I certainly didn’t consider myself in a special category. Masters is just an excuse for people to give up too early. :-)

a structure the hackers don’t understand

I’m guessing many hackers don’t know EBCDIC

Security through Obscurity. Proven to be a useless defence.

I’ve always found the Masters (30+) category ridiculous in an endurance sport where many people are peaking in their early 30s. Good riddance I say

Agreed, they tend to be the fastest and hardest (in XC and CX anyway). I’ll be over 60 next season according to BC rules, so I’m looking for a new super-super-vets class. Is ‘coffin dodgers’ too blunt?

How scary do you want to get?

Cyber researcher Jay Radcliffe used to be among the hundreds of thousands of diabetics relying on computerized insulin pumps. He said he stopped using his Medtronic pump after he found that he could hack into its wireless communications system and potentially dump fatal doses of insulin into his body.

only the really brave or extra curious are allowed to find Gower. why do you think we have hidden it behind port talbot?

There’s been a load of TV adverts for the Aberavon Best Western hotel this week. For some reason all the panoramic shots of the beach look west towards the Gower, rather then east, towards Port Talbot.

weren’t the Israelies suspected of releasing malicious code that shut down Iranian centrifuges

Yes, Stuxnet. Israel and/or US suspected of being behind it.

I liked the way that having a wafer thin slice of toast with the red pepper and squid meringue thing was considered to totally spoil the dish.
As Mrs Rusty said, you’d definitely want a kebab on the way home after that.

By the time he broke 50 minutes for a 25 Engers had abandoned his more extreme drillium efforts and concentrated on aerodynamics. Note the reversed front brake stirrup and hidden brake levers. Running a 57 chainring with a 12-15 4 speed freewheel.

I seem to remember YT’s first review in Dirt coincided with their first two page advert at the front of the mag.

Yes, that’s how magazines sell advertising space. “Hey, we’re doing a review of your stuff in next month’s edition, would you like to buy some advertising to go with it?”. Not the other way round.

Whilst Vino has a dirty past the Katusha general manager, one Viacheslav Ekimov, was Lance’s right hand man. So he’s obviously renowned for his clean and ethical behaviour.

Plus Astana are effectively sponsored by the Kazakhstani government, which is admired throughout the world for its probity, respect for human rights and lack of corruption.

Did Nibali really believe he was walking into a clean team with him at the helm?

If there was ever a team most likely to dope, it has to be Astana. A team led by Vinokourov who was sacked from the team as a rider for blood doping. Quite incredible. And the list of Astana old boys is terrifying – Armstrong, Bruyneel, Contador, Leipheimer, Kessler, Kreuziger. You’d have to be naive beyond belief to think this was a good team to join if you wanted to ride clean.

Very difficult to buy stuff for anglers without doing the equivalent of giving a pair of knee pads to a time trialist.

Even something like a fly box means you have to know what type of flies they’re using.

Zinger/nipper/forceps set is pretty much universal and always needed
http://www.fishtec.co.uk/buy.cfm/zingers,-nippers-and-tools/dr.-slick-deluxe-gift-set/40/no/68718

You can buy a pretty basic intro fly-tying kit for £50 (e.g. Veniard Complete Fly Tying Kit ) but as Stoner says, this might be a bit like buying an MTB enthusiast an Apollo (look darling, it’s got a spring at the back and everything!) A good vice alone will cost more than £50.

Books are always good, and I can strongly recommend Matching the Hatch by Pat O’Reilly. Does a first class job in explaining what fly fishing is really all about. (I’ve fished with Pat, a top bloke and the fly fishing equivalent of someone like Jedi.)

Britain to be hit by entirely typical weather

TEMPERATURES in the UK are going to fall sharply over the coming weeks because that is what happens at this time of year, it has been claimed.
Meteorologists believe that winter, a spell of short, cold days commonly defined as a season, will be more or less exactly what you would expect.

First ‘Arctic Blast’ headline of the winter from the Express. Apparently there might be a bit of snow on the Scottish mountains, in December. Who’d have thought it.

One of the greatest political thinkers of our generation

I’m sorry, I’ll do anything. I wore a condom. Put the phone down! Oh what’s going to happen. Look I’ve got a mental illness. Do you think that made it better?
…
Andrew Sachs, Andrew Sachs. I said something I didn’t have oughta, like I had sex with your granddaughter. But it was consensual and she wasn’t menstrual, it was consensual lovely sex.
…
We can keep ringing, and even after the show’s finished, kick his front door in and scream apologies into his bottom.

Lots of self-catering in the area, but not so much B&B

Glasfryn Guest House[/url] is in Brechfa village.

Not sure if the Forest Arms in Brechfa is doing B&B ATM but worth asking

Alltygolau is just up the road in Felingwm

Obree’s ‘washing machine’ bike?

Have you tried asking Smudge at MTB Batteries?

I did Afan, Brechfa, Cwm Rhayder and Nant yr Arian in a day once

Bloody hell, that’s a serious day out!

i always wanted one of the Air Arms Springers

I used to have a Pro-Sport before I went rimfire. Very well made, very heavy, not as accurate as a PCP but very satisfying to use. Springers teach good technique (bit like learning to ride on a rigid before going to a full sus)

I imagine its one of the frames that Holdsworth used to distribute – the same frames went out badged as Holdsworth, F H Grubb, Bertin etc
Parts look roughly right for the time; TA cranks and rings, GB brakes, Atom hubs, Huret gears. (Gears may have been later, the original ones might have been Simplex, plastic rear mech)
Are the wheels 27″ or 700c?
Not sure it’s worth a respray, the original decals are the main redeeming feature.
It’ll weigh a ton and ride like a brick, but that’s the price for authenticity.
As ever, RetroBike[/url] is the place for people who really know about this stuff.

Could it be done with say, Java and JNI? Or C# and whatever the equivalent is?

Probably. C# plus P/Invoke or COM Interop, or Java plus JNI. But as the JNI wiki says “Basically, anything that Java code can do can be done using JNIEnv, albeit with considerably less ease.”

That’s a more useful debate (or not!) because they are much more closely aligned.

Yes, and add Node.js while your at it. But although the language syntaxes are becoming more similar, it’s the frameworks and dev tools that really make the difference, and that’s where it really is horses for courses.

Who the hell needs all this complex geekery you can do in C++?

In my case (thankfully for only one fairly unique project) because it allows a combination of low-level stuff that can most easily be done in C and assembler and a complex UI with multiple windows and an embedded web browser control using MFC. C++ happens to be the sweetspot.

I’m doing it because I’m the only one in the company old enough to not run away screaming when they see the source code. And as soon as I finish breathing new life into its decaying corpse I’ve got a sexy new project waiting using HTML5, SignalR and MongoDB.

can we have a Java vs. C# debate now?

Nothing wrong with a good programming language religious war. Bit like a wheel size debate :-)

Never come across a situation in Java where I couldn’t do something.

I was comparing problem domains where both languages can be used.

So in the domain where Java can be used, Java can be used.
Fair play, if you had a choice between Java and C++, choosing Java would make sense (or C# if, like us, you’re a Windows shop). Just pointing out that sometimes your problem is a 6″ nail, and a screwdriver just ain’t gonna work.

oh wait.. you’re a geek

Ouch! Being called a geek by a Java adherent 8O

Alternatively if you’re clever and careful …

Unfortunately I tend to get to work with stuff like this :-(

Never come across a situation in Java where I couldn’t do something.

Written many device drivers in Java? :-)
We have a desktop app that does some very low level stuff, to the degree that it includes inline assembler and direct kernel calls. C++ is still the tool of choice for such stuff.

our coding standard also specified a unified layout of where the squiggly brackets go

I survived the great curly bracket war of ’96. Grown men almost coming to blows over indentation? Yep.

Maybe it was done for an auto documentation creator like javadoc?

Sadly not, all lovingly handcrafted.

We had a developer who was meticulous about commenting his code, but without imparting any useful information whatsoever

//////////////////////////////////
// function : DoCalc
// parameters :
// parm1 : integer
// parm2 : integer
// return value : integer
int DoCalc(int parm1, int parm2) {

Now raining apparently with only isolated patches of snow left.
Saturday looks like being fairly horrible; cold, wet and windy with some sleet.
You’ll want to be well equipped.
Snowdon summit forecast – http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/forecast/gcmjghxpx

First snow of the season falls across Snowdonia

I generally have a bottle in cage, lycra jersey with rear pockets and a rucksack with various stuff in. Does that make me weird, broadminded or indecisive?

If nothing else, this is the verbal equivalent of gladiatorial times.

Bought a 22 year old steel Shorter TT bike

You have excellent taste sir, and a sense of history.