It’s not easy and mid-teens are a terrible time for many children, often compounded by experiences at school and college. My daughter has always had difficulty socialising, even with the very few people she might call friends. She finished college in June and we have tried not put too much pressure on her to get a job immediately because I know even the prospect of an interview alone is frightening and I don’t think she could handle a job where there is too much pressure to behave in specific ways. She has started volunteering in a charity shop twice a week and really enjoying it, though she does not interact with customers much or have to use the till; I wouldn’t like to claim that a huge change has taken place but it is certainly a positive step. Your daughter may eventually find something that helps in a similar way.

But try not to despair too much. She’s still very young and while the changes you’d like to see may be a long time happening things can and surely will improve. Parents naturally want to fix problems for their kids but sometimes what works is not obvious. Parents trying to be supportive can backfire but just being there, being patient and showing you will always care and are trying to understand can help a great deal.

The SKS raceblade style clip-on mudguards may sound good but they look fiddly to me. I prefer full length for the year-round commuter.

Some suggestions in this roundup by CW. Also a recent gravel-specific one by CW and also CUK have just put a piece about using mudguards offroad.

To everyone stating the bleedin’ obvious – that gmail is wonderfully searchable – yes, we know! I posted a link to the list of search operators available in gmail, FFS.

molgrips said “I now need to migrate to another system” so I believe that means moving away from gmail (and thereby losing its great search functionality).

If you think that a standard email client or set of offline files is equally capable then you may be in for a surprise.

The filing cabinet analogy was to illustrate my point that I find filing emails in folders useful, not that it is compulsory.

Life’s too short for filing email into folders.

Conversely, plenty of people find separating emails out can reduce the time spent searching later.

It doesn’t take long to run a few finds and add labels (if it’s gmail) or drag them into a folder. In gmail I have filters set to up so that many of them get labels assigned before I even see them.

If you had 39,676 letters from banks, utility companies, council, insurance companies etc etc would you put them all randomly in a single huge drawer? I wouldn’t and that’s the principle I apply to emails – if a small up-front effort filing reduces the time and effort spent identifying them later then it’s a worthwhile step in my book.

What Cougar said.

Outlook is awful and your data won’t play nicely with other clients. If you install Thunderbird, allow it access in Gmail then in Thunderbird make sure you tick the box to keep offline copies so it saves everything to your disk, not just the header information.

I’d definitely cull the real chaff first to save you looking through 23,000 each time you want to find something. Gmail has an enviable set of filtering tools – date, subject, size and lots more.
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7190?hl=en

If you have 12k unread then they are the first to go – search for is:unread and delete all.

Then delete all newsletters/automated/mailchimp, reminders and notifications.

You can use multiple search terms to find emails and conversations and move them all to a folder (you can even create the folder as you do it). Then, when you have your email client those emails will already be moved into subfolders in the account.

If you want to move any emails to the new system you can setup that account in Thunderbird and copy/move them across.

Thanks all. I wasn’t aware of the congestion/air charge, so really grateful for mentioning that!

Our (Shropshire) Bulb standing charges from an email on Friday:

Elec: from 25.083p to 48.127p
Gas: from 26.112p to 27.219p

They intend to increase our DD by 42%.

The 2011 MBPs I’ve seen can go to 10.13 High Sierra. You can check the latest version of OS X your mac will run here:

https://everymac.com/ultimate-mac-lookup/

Once you’ve deleted the app I’d check for any related folders in ~/Library/Application Support (that’s within your home folder, not the HDD’s Library folder).

Someone further up the page said they didn’t think the modern postie was delivering the same kind of volumes as they did in the past.

I bet they don’t live in Shropshire.

I speak to several postal delivery and collection staff, both near home and at the office.

Deliveries have gradually got worse since privatisation. One chap I know quite well, who has been a postie for 30 years, said he walks an average of 32,000 steps a day, sometimes over 40,000. The rounds are getting longer and longer as more houses are built, they are always doing overtime because of this and the fact that experienced staff are leaving, the management seem to actively try to piss people off. Covid has made the job worse, online shopping went nuts last year so the number of packets and boxes has soared and there’s no let-up (and no support or additional manpower). Also management are forever coming up with ideas to make more money (for shareholders, not the workers) with delivering flyers and crap nobody wants. I don’t envy them one bit. It’s not even as if the pay is any good and they’re out there in all weathers.

RM van drivers on rural rounds have been permanently snowed under with parcels, this means they’re often not even trying to deliver letters more than 3 times a week, including to businesses, because parcels take priority and completely fill the van. Management have just rejigged the van routes, for no apparent reason. None of the drivers can understand why they’ve done it or why they refused to wait until after Christmas to implement it. There are not enough of them available to train the others so a lot of them were tossed in the deep end, learning the round from scratch as they go. “Yeah right, it’s not that bad with sat-nav, google maps etc” you say but in the countryside knowing which farm is down that track and where this house name or that farm actually is on the route all adds up and makes a huge difference to how long it can take. Post codes can be tricky and you’d be surprised how much mail is not correctly addressed. At work the post arrives around 1-2pm, that’s on the days we actually receive it.

Horseshoe pass would be a road I’d recommend OP, near Llangollen.

Hopefully not tomorrow morning (Sunday 3 Oct) as a large number of cyclists will be riding up it in the Wrexham RC Hill Climb. And anyhow there’s too much ‘spirited’ driving and motorcycling up there already!

When I first had a driving licence I did more than my share of selfish dickhead driving. It was effing stupid and dangerous and I’m just so relieved no-one got hurt. Several people I knew weren’t so lucky.

Just try LibreOffice and see how you get on. It’s free and will open/save MS Office and lots of other formats too. We use it at work alongside MS Office 2016, though MS stopped providing updates for that version.

It’s perhaps not as slick as MS but it’s genuinely free and open-source. At home I’ve converted a lot of my personal Excel files to the OpenOffice formats so I’m not locked into Microsoft (which is what they want).

https://www.libreoffice.org/

Otherwise there’s Google docs/sheets/drive. Zoho.com is a free alternative that I use for some shared spreadsheets. Admittedly using these online apps in the browser is slower than a desktop app but it’s all backed up for you and again it costs nothing to give them a try.

Another fact-checking piece by a marine fisheries ecologist/biologist.

https://www.inverse.com/science/seaspiracy-fact-check-debunked-interview

A mate of mine who’s a well respected marine scientist based in Scotland also recommended the article. The author Bryce Stewart states in a follow-up tweet:

A much more scientifically accurate & balanced film about #overfishing is Troubled Waters. @MattyJudge made this as a student with almost no budget. But it neatly highlights issues, good news stories & the power of individual action to make a difference https://t.co/lgm2oYecLe

— Bryce Stewart (@BD_Stew) April 10, 2021

and in a further reply mentions The End Of The Line (available to rent on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/ondemand/theendoftheline2).

I’ve not been on the Crewe line but on recent journeys from Shrewsbury to Chester (and then on to Bangor) the carriages have been nearly empty – no more than 5 people at a time, often just 2 or 3 of us.

Shrewsbury station has seemed quiet despite me being there at what I’d expect to be fairly busy times around 9am or 5.30 pm.

It’s just over 12kg

That’s a relief!

TBH I’d not spend any money on it bar tyres (if the stock ones are poor). Just let him have some fun on it and you can perhaps put money aside for a nice bike when he gets either too big or if it’s obviously holding back his riding.

Will he notice?

No.

Difference between cassettes with the same ratios is more like 30g, Halfords page says the bike weighs over 16kg.

You may find that a wider range cassette (which may then require a better rear mech) means he can ride up stuff he’d otherwise have to push, which won’t be much fun at 16kg.

+1 for tyres. Conti Explorer and Schwalbe Black Jack are good knobblies otherwise perhaps Marathon HS420 or Maxxis DTH.

James Morton of SIS answered a very similar question during a recent Cycling Podcast Q&A. He suggested that it is possible that you’re not eating enough after the ride.

From what I’ve read, electrolytes are not necessarily going to make much or any difference to muscle cramp or a post-ride headache.

We stay near Hells Mouth every year. Sun Inn, Llanengan is a standard Robinson’s pub.

I’ve not tried riding up Rhiw from the south side (it’s effing steep) but have ridden over from Aberdaron, which is lovely. Good chip shop and a decent bakery in Aberdaron. The cafe at Plas Glyn Y Weddw art gallery in Llanbedrog does good lunches and the cakes are rather special. Best coffee I’ve found is at a little place in Abersoch called Two Islands Ice Cream, they know what they’re doing.

If you like back lanes then the Sustrans routes in this leaflet are worth a look:
https://www.sustrans.org.uk/media/2996/llyn-leaflet-web-2015.pdf

Message me if you want more route ideas.

I would follow H1ghland3r’s advice. You don’t need to install 10.10. A wipe and clean install is the way to go. I’ve upgraded a few Macbooks and Minis from 10.9 to 10.11, though they usually get a bit tardy. If you can justify it, fitting an SSD drive and 8GB of RAM has hugely improved the 3 Macbook Pro models in our office.

Once you’re up to 10.11.6 then I’d use the App Store to add any further updates like Safari, Sec Update (2018-004 IIRC). I have tried to install Safari and Sec Update on 2 separate machines from a previously used .pkg files – exactly the same no. of bytes, creation date etc – but it wasn’t happy so I let the App Store update them.

Backup your data, keychains, preferences etc then download new versions of Skype, Dropbox and other software.

When I bought junior his first electric guitar in 2012 it was one of those butterscotch blond Classic Vibe Teles. After an hour or two in the shop it was one of those “what’s the catch” moments. This guitar is as well finished as any other guitar in the shop up to £1500, plays better than any of them, sounds like a Tele should

Sounds about right. After a work colleague has bought an Affinity Tele I did a bit of reading. I found the “Chappers and the Captain” videos on YT by Rob Chapman and Lee Anderton. They blind tested 4 Strat models; the Squier Classic Vibe was the cheapest by some margin (two of the others were custom shop models) yet both would be more than happy with it. The same seems to apply to the Tele range.

I’ve not dared to go back and watch any more as their videos seem great but there are loads and all seem quite long. I could easily lose several years of my life learning stuff I don’t need to know about guitars, amps effects etc that I’ll never get to play.

https://www.youtube.com/user/RobChappers/

How was it reported in 1976? And how did people react to it then?

I was too young to know at the time but it was still being mentioned in articles in the 80s.

I find it odd as he idolised so many black artists and claimed to reject commercialisation. Perhaps it was partly the drugs and booze or perhaps he was (and maybe is) just a complete arsehole, though I find that most people making such statements are plain ignorant and have been fed some prejudiced bollocks for long enough that they genuinely believe it. Modern examples: Daily Mail readers and anyone who thinks Nigel Farage is an honourable person.

The issue I have is with the fake outrage in 2020 about something a prominent musician said in 1976. Yes it was dreadful, but self-indulgently roasting him on a forum now is just a bit pathetic. Is that the only way people can feel good about themselves nowadays?

It was 1976, 44 years ago when the UK was a different place. I can’t possibly condone what he said in the slightest but that article linked to just looks like a hatchet piece, one stop short of clickbait.

If people want to use that as reason to slag him off then they probably should get a bit of a life. If you don’t like his music then there’s plenty of other stuff to listen to.

He’s a really good athlete and I’m sure he’s doing this with the best intentions, but the idea of reframing the NHS as a charity has the potential to do more harm than good.

I agree.

Of the donations, how many are from people earning £9/hour and how many (and how much) made by the better off? All those gushing TV events – Children in Need, Sport Relief etc – with their overpaid celebs asking the little people to cough up again and again while they invest their huge salaries and appearance fees in tax avoidance schemes. It is wrong.

Carers don’t need you to clap for them; what they need is a government that allows them a passable wage and fair benefits (like more than 5 days sick pay a year) instead of being treated like disposable plebs at the bottom of the food chain. And anyone who ‘claps for carers’ having voted Tory in December is a hypocrite.

As for new people discovering the Joy’s of biking, earlier today a family of four decided to stop and sprawl their bikes across the trail and have a break in the shade at the bottom of a downhill rooty section, lucky I was taking it easy.

Yes you should be taking it easy, it’s not your private track.

I don’t care what people wear or how much they spent, I’m just glad to see more people out on their bikes. They will hopefuly realise how great it is and I’d like to think that every person riding may on another day be a driver who gives me lots of room when they overtake.

Running 28mm Schwalbe Duranos (which is being replaced with the One Addix, which is also available in 30mm), definitely a bit less road buzz than 25mm.

It’s a good tradeoff for me, a bit tougher and durable than the Pro One / GP5000 type yet doesn’t give up a huge amount in rolling resistance.

Young women using their looks when I was hoping for music do nothing for me. Similarly, anyone showing how fast they can do some soloing is sooo boring. Shredding just for its own sake is so ’90s. <yawn>

If you want to see drum covers done really well you’ll struggle to find better than Sina. I don’t get a ‘porn’ vibe from her but she is one damned fine drummer and the production quality is very high.

https://www.youtube.com/user/sinadrumming/videos

@jeffl – Naturli was recommended by the owner of a local cafe. I was pleasantly surprised by how nice it was and would recommend anyone to give it a try regardless of their existing preferences.

It’s worth checking your Zoom privacy settings.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/27/trolls-zoom-privacy-settings-covid-19-lockdown

How to Keep the Party Crashers from Crashing Your Zoom Event

The SV20 is classed as ‘ultra light’ but I can’t imagine anyone else’s standard butyl tubes being more resistant to sharp objects that have gone through a tyre.

If you really want to avoid punctures then perhaps get some tougher tyres such as Durano Plus.

I also use my card, for business and private sellers. If anything goes wrong I’d rather contact my bank (Co-Op) than all my emails disappear into a void at Paypal and I am unable to do anything about it.

Disagree with the ‘cheap guitar = BSO’ style comments.

A couple of years ago my 14 y/o daughter wanted a guitar and decided on Strat style. After trying a few we ended up buying the Squier Bullet from local music shop for about £125. It plays perfectly well and sounds good enough. An important consideration was that the basswood body makes it noticeably lighter than the more expensive models.

Sure you can pick holes if you like but it’s miles better than any of the cheap guitars I played when I was younger. Plenty of time for the kid to get upgrade-itis.

I think I’ll stick with my current set-up as I’m not convinced my 51 year old ears would pick out the difference.

Don’t assume anything! Years ago I struggled to convince a non-musical mate of mine that a ‘basic’ separates CD setup would be more enjoyable than a typical stack from Sony, Sharp or whoever. Eventually got him to the local dealer and he was shocked at the differences between similarly priced amp and speaker models with his favourite Smiths CD (not known for its sound quality) used as demo material.

I’m still running a Marantz CD bought s/h from the same shop nearly 20 years ago, Rotel tuner (ditto), Rega Planar 2 with Linn K9 cartridge through a Morgan Audio integrated amp and JC1 bookshelf speakers, designed and built by hifi guru John Chapman, who lived just up the road from me at the time. These 3 items are all at least 30 years old. It’s not especially strong in the bass but is a sweet sounding setup to my fairly demanding ears.

Now my kids are older I’m hoping to retrieve the spiked speaker stands from the loft and set it up properly again (but no spikes used in the speakers, blu-tak does that job just as well).

@Houns the Severn is slowly dropping back now, Bridgnorth gauge peaked at 5.04m late last night – https://www.gaugemap.co.uk/#!Detail/72/78

The levels are not quite as high as November 2000 (5.26 m) and parts of Shrewsbury and Ironbridge have been saved from flooding by the portable barriers and walls built for this purpose in 2002. The Frankwell barriers have been deployed a good number of times since then. Lots of pics of Shrewsbury floods by SolsticewebPhotography on FB. Most of the streets in Shrewsbury that were flooded have reopened today.

For anyone travelling in Shropshire, updates to road closures in the county are posted at https://newsroom.shropshire.gov.uk/category/highways/

Been with Co-Op for a number of years now.
At age 17 (Sep 2018) adding my son was going to cost an extra £1,000 on the £220 policy for my Skoda Fabia 1.2. Ha ha, on yer bike sunshine!

A year later he’s 18 and the additional premium was £450. OK, I can just about stretch to that.

By the time he’d had some lessons and I put him onto the policy in mid-January it only cost me £204 for 8 months. I was pleasantly surprised 🙂

He will need his own car once he starts work later in the year. Co-Op do a young driver policy (he’s very sensible and would be happy to have a ‘black box’ fitted) so we’ll contact them for a quote when the time comes.

Agricultural land use in the hills of Wales has hardly changed (structurally) one bit in the last 100 years

That’s not true. I recall the wholesale implementation of drainage of marginal land in the Welsh uplands, meaning water ends up in the rivers faster. And some of the other effects of changes in agricultural practice, ploughing in places where it wasn’t previously possible, ever increasing emphasis on yield over other factors (esp. dairy), and that’s before we get onto the widespread use of chemical such as nitrate fertiliser since WW2, which have had a range of hugely negative effects.

I don’t know where you’ve seen “massive regeneration of hedgerows and planting of streamside corridors” but it’s not taking place on a significant scale in any of the places I know; yes a few farmers have been persuaded to do a bit of bankside planting but it’s token stuff in specific locations, often led by the local wildlife trust. Farmers generally do not go around planting native trees and I’ve seen miles of hedges ripped out and replaced with fencing but tiny amounts that have been planted (and they often look pretty pathetic).

I fear you have completely missed the point and have fallen into exactly the trap of simplistic finger pointing that you suggest you hate so much.

No, you just think you’re being unfairly maligned, even though I said that farming practices are only one part of a complex problem.

Loads of water flowing across the A5 near Corwen today, the Dee / Dyfrdwy was as high as I’ve ever seen it. Oddly, north of Cerrigydrudion the fields weren’t as wet and the Conwy wasn’t as high as I expected and Ogwen was windy but water levels weren’t far above normal.

The levels in the upper Severn catchment above Shrewsbury are as bad as I’ve ever known. The gauge where the Vyrnwy & Severn join is only 10cm below the peak level in the 2000 floods. Some towns like Shrewsbury and Ironbridge have much better defences than 20 years ago but it spells misery for those further downstream.

If hydrology and floods is your bag then Dave Throup (@davethroupea) is a fascinating twitter follow.

Regarding @eat_more_cheese’s thread on blame, if you read the research and reports (sometimes buried and almost always ignored by decision-makers) then this is always going to happen. Even if you put aside climate change, then building houses etc on floodplains, channelling and engineering, lack of storage and slowing in the uplands all contribute to exacerbating the situation and some of the research has been out there for decades.

So when the NFU argue in their shitty magazine that farmers are blameless while the answer is dredging and getting the water downstream as fast as possible I feel like it’s time to shoot someone. Anyone who thinks there’s a simple answer to any complex question doesn’t deserve to have their opinion see the light of day.

Naturli vegan block was recommended by at a local vegan restaurant and is the best alternative to butter I’ve found.

To the OP: if you don’t have a strong ethical reasons then you needn’t describe yourself as a vegetarian. When my wife (who does most of the cooking) went veggie I thought that I might miss meat but it’s the opposite, I very quickly found I just didn’t even want any but I am not a vegetarian.

I don’t quite understand why meat-eaters enjoy trolling on this kind of discussion. It’s like a bunch of noisy pissheads gatecrashing an AA meeting with some tinnies, a bottle of vodka and bad breath. No problem with differerent perspectives but if you want to big up eating meat (and slagging off people who don’t) then why not start your own thread?

The full moon names people often refer to originated among Native Americans living in what is now the the northern and eastern USA.
https://www.countryliving.com/life/g4569/full-moon-names-meaning/
Supermoons, micromoons, blood moons are also mentioned.

Lots of Wolf moon images on twitter – https://twitter.com/hashtag/wolfmoon

Better to acknowledge the possibility of one’s own ignorance on a topic than assume that it’s an internet-millenial-snowflake trend simply because you’ve not come across it until recently.

support your local bar and restaurant.

Why? Do they not have grocers or supermarkets where you live?
And if I did, would it benefit me at all?
Do they donate money to help the local A&E department flooded with pissed, sometimes very angry people every weekend (and often on weeknights too)? Presuming there still is an A&E, and people willing to work there.

Or perhaps I should spend my money in the local tobbaconist. Or the betting shop and red light district.

Seriously, anyone wondering whether to change their drinking habits might like this blog post and listen to the linked podcast. And if you don’t want to that’s fine too.

What a lovely video, I feel all peaceful and at one with the world now.