Sell in Scotland, rent something nice in Dorset for a year, by the time you come back things just might have stabilised.

If you're renting out a place in the UK while living elsewhere you'll have to have someone manage it (as it's not like you can just pop round) which is a chunk of the rent gone. And while I can't speak for what it's like in Dorset, much of the country has an excess of rental property after the BTL bandwagon and forced movers renting out houses rather than selling – hence rents are staying low and even falling in some areas.

The early 90s house price crash may have had the steep downward line in 91/92, but the curve didn't flatten out and start pointing upwards again until 1996. I think this has even longer to go before it'll get better.

Tracklogs let you pick a spot and get the mapping around it. For road 1:50k would do fine, 60km square is £12, up to 100km square for £33.

You could then get it printed – if you plot your route on there first then you could just generate a PDF of A4 pages which you could take down to the print shop for colour laser print (in case they get wet). Would probably fit in a jersey pocket better too.

http://www.tracklogs.co.uk

Find your master socket, the one that looks like this:

Undo the screws to get into the bottom half of it:

The socket you can see is a test socket which is not connected to any extension wiring. Plug in a microfilter, plug your modem and a phone into the filter. Try it again.

If you're not getting the problem with it like that, something in your extension wiring is dodgy and needs investigating – that's not BT or the ISP's problem, it's yours.

If you still get the problem, it's either the microfilter (try others, some are rubbish) or a problem with the line.

I'd put money on cheap crappy microfilters or something wrong with your extensions though.

Thanks all – looking at weights it may even come out lighter than what I've got (which is an anchor anyway next to the pricier road bikes). Not planning on using it off-road either.

grumm > is that the "sand" colour? It's what's in stock, but the photo on the planet-x site is more yellowy. May just be one of those shades that looks quite a bit lighter or darker depending on the light.

I've had a black mk1 on Revolutions and now an orange mk3 on Pikes. Love it to bits.

Nothing too special about the rest, hope hoops (5.1Ds), slx brakes 180/160, mostly Deore bits. The way it manages to descend so well yet climb back up so capably is ace. It's my only mtb and can't think of anything I'd rather have for all-round riding – from all-dayers to playing at the bmx track. Both of mine have been mediums, I'm 5'11 and the fit has felt spot on.

(reminds me, must get round to selling the mk1)

I think on-one are doing the same hooks quite a bit cheaper than that.

Wahaca in Covent Garden is ace, and pretty cheap – they do mexican "street food". No reservations though, so either eat at a quieter time or expect a bit of a wait. http://wahaca.co.uk/

There's a good italian "Da Mario" on Endell St off cov garden too which does great food at sane prices.

I'm very happy indeed with my SLX.

The ones that don't require that stuff are based in Ireland.

Have used http://www.fancyplates.com/ before and they were fine. I like completely "clean" plates all to legal spacing, etc with no additional text (not even the name/postcode of who made them) and they did a great job.

Technically plates have to meet the relevant British Standard (that includes requirements for having the maker of the plate's details and no other text) but I have yet to come across anyone with plates of legal colour / font / size / material / no silly borders that has actually had any trouble with the law.

Edinburgh Bicycle Co do a budget fixie now for £350, quite cleanly styled but a bit heavy.

£100+

Or hire at about £50 for the season, and usually you can pay an extra fee (or just don't return and don't get your £50 deposit back) if you want to keep it.

You mean to pick a subset of your music to sync with the iPhone?

You need to create some smart playlists for the genres you want to sync. Details here: http://www.smartplaylists.com/comments.php?id=P16_0_1_0 and the site has lots of ideas on other smart playlists to create. They're a very powerful way of pulling music out of your library with various properties that you set.

Once you've got those set up, go into the settings for the iPhone and tick the smart playlists that you want to sync on to there.

I had a jimi wallet. It broke, mainly from sitting on it when it was in my back pocket.

The idea stuck though – I just got a minimal card/ID wallet and use that. Debit card, credit card, drivers licence, oystercard, and a few notes.

You can get by with a surf/watersport one – I did for a while. A pretty thin shorty will do – anything more and you'd be boiling hot – although the flexibility around the arms isn't great. Fine for the 750m of a sprint tri, once you get into longer distances a proper suit can make a big difference. Or just hire.

Don't bank on the water getting hot enough for a wetsuit ban – it'll only happen with very high air temps and in fairly shallow water. There is a (only slightly) lower temperature where they become optional, but even that doesn't happen a lot.

20 a day? Nuts.

If you really need it, going up to the next tariff for an extra £10/month doubles that to 1200/month.

If you've got a MobileMe account, there's a "Find my iPhone" feature should you use it.

http://www.apple.com/mobileme/whats-new/

Good story of it working here: http://happywaffle.livejournal.com/5890.html

I guess if you're insured the easier route is to just get it blocked by the network – lots of people (me included) aren't insured though, so if you did have a mobileme account it would make a lot of sense to track it instead.

More often than not, the kits have a load of tools you're unlikely to use. The cheaper sets have tools that are made of cheese that just bend when you use them if components are a bit seized together.

Start with a decent set of allen keys (2mm to 8mm and everything in between, plus T25 torx for disc bolts), a chain tool, spoke key, cable cutters and a workstand. That'll cover what you need for 90% of jobs and pretty much all basic maintenance.

Then when you buy a new cassette, get a chainwhip and lockring removal tool. Crank extractors and BB tools will all vary a lot depending on what you have so buy as needed or get the LBS to do those jobs. Likewise for headset removal/fitting – weigh up whether the tools are worth buying (can be £90-100+ for a press, remover, crown race setter and star-fangled nut install tool) for the number of times you'll need to fit a headset.

I really like my G9. Bought for the same reason as you, to replace a D50 that never got used. So solidly built (nice knurled metal knobs and everything) for a relatively cheap consumer camera.

I would expect any watch at any price to ‘keep great time’. If it didn’t ‘keep great time’ I would return it.

Mechanical watches vary, and +/- 30s a day will be within spec (vintage ones are worse), although usually +/- 10s is more like it. Quartz will be more accurate varying only fractions of a second a day, until the battery dies at least.

If your second hand matching the beeps on the radio is important to you, probably best not to buy a auto. If you, like me, are fascinated by and enjoy owning something that’s had some incredible engineering put into it, cramming 100+ parts into a tiny space with tiny springs and gears all moving around – then an auto is very nice to have.

I second that, especially if you want an auto.

I’m currently wearing an auto Citizen Promaster diver, in titanium (NY0054 if you’re searching by model number). Not a UK one sadly but there are plenty of sellers on ebay who can send from the far east. Keeps great time, is wearing very well indeed (with plenty of swimming and *gasp* actual dive use) and cost just under £100.

If you like bracelets and chunkier divers watches, you really can’t go wrong with a Seiko Monster – fantastic quality for the price. Again, far east only so off to ebay for one.

Or if you want another option, take a look at Christoper Ward – http://www.christopherward.co.uk/ – british-designed, swiss made. A mate has a C6 diver and it’s very nice indeed. Bit more expensive and quartz-only (auto due soon apparently, for more money of course..) but quality-wise it would hold it’s own against any of the big names at 3-4x the price.

Our HPs have docking stations with two ports – you can use both, each driving a separate monitor. I think the internal display switches off if you’re driving both externals though.

I used to use this guy for a few years when I lived in Uxbridge: http://www.autoservicecentre.co.uk/ – always was very good, saved me lots on a few occasions when I’d mis-diagnosed something, asked him to replace it and he just fixed it instead.

He’s down in West Drayton, not far and there’s frequent buses back to Uxbridge. It’s one guy in a unit (with an assistant sometimes) so he can get busy though.

http://www.parksidemotors.co.uk/ are down on Cowley Road so closer to Uxbridge, used to use them for MOTs and the odd bits when my usual place was too busy. They seemed fine too.

Bruce appearing on stage with The Gaslight Anthem for 59 Sound was the highlight for me.

Blur were awesome too.

I’ve had a very nice meal at Budokan. Not sure where in Bristol it is though, it’s just down the hill from zerodegrees but I have no idea where that is relative to anything else.

I’ve lived in London for a few years now. I’m very used to it :D

With VMware Fusion he can run whatever other OS he needs – windows, linux, OSX server, etc.

Keyboard isn’t a problem – all the keys are there. You can set up the Windows VM to use the same keymap easily, or if he can touch-type on the standard UK layout (” for shift-2 rather than @, for instance) then you can change to that and just ignore what’s on the keys.

I go back and forth a lot (currently Apple keyboard plugged in to my work Vista laptop) and it really doesn’t bother me that some keys are the wrong way round, you just remember which ones!

Bear in mind that education pricing is very good on Apple kit but you can usually only buy at that price through the uni’s own network (see here). They usually have a deal to give a free iPod – it’s an iPod Touch this year – when you buy a Macbook. Given that he won’t need it until a couple of weeks into his time there, I’d say best to wait and buy it through the edu route.

Also with the Applecare – you can take it out at any point during the first year. I’ve always left the cash in the bank and taken it out later on than giving it to Apple up-front.

Likewise. It’s one of the reasons I prefer SS for commuting (beyond the maintenance advantage) – you can’t stomp in a big gear, carrying loads of speed. You just reach the stage where there’s no point spinning your legs any faster so you may as well just sit back and chill.

Sharpening up your own skills on hazard perception and prediction, forward planning, etc can help a lot too. Take a look at the car or motorcycle Roadcraft books – you should always be looking for possible things coming up, early warning signs that a car will turn or change lanes without indicating, whether that car in a side road will pull out on you, that sort of thing. If you’re seeing it early and ready to deal with it, it leaves you a lot calmer than if you’re being surprised and having to take evasive action every journey.

Sites like runnersworld.com have training plans, or the mags usually publish them a few times a year. For beginners, best to work up to 10k slowly first though, you don’t want to add too much too quickly.

I did for my crappy old town bike. Nitromors followed by aerosol direct-to-metal paint.

However it’s not really stood up to use too well – it scratches really easily, and the top tube is covered in marks from locking it up. Fine for a bodge to freshen up a cheap old frame, probably not too durable for an off-road bike.

Never really had a good reason to look beyond FSA XLII.

Correct, as long as you don’t want to upload it all at once it would do the job. Worth paying for a Pro account though.

Nitromors worked for me. Put newspaper down all around where you’re working and make sure as much skin as possible is covered – that stuff burns.

Looks like a T@B – http://www.tab-rv.com/

£8k upwards 8O

There’s a few of them. Google found a good roundup of them here: http://www.vwcampervanblog.com/25-cool-vintage-retro-micro-caravans-to-compliment-your-vw-camper-van/

I’m still not sure why you’d want to spend £4-6k on one – all the drawbacks of a caravan, but all the room of a tent.

C – do it as if you’re on a motorbike. Car drivers are more likely to look on that side and you’re more visible anyway.

Do B long enough and someone’s passenger WILL open their door on you.

Demo of how to do it for our tent is here:

The others are much the same. Easy once you have the knack.

I did my DAS just before this came in but we did have a go on the new pad at the test centre as the instructors were getting used to the layout. I did fine on that, seemed much tighter than in that vid though and might be a bit dodgy in the wet. The other factor is that a lot of these testing areas will be fresh tarmac that might be quite slippery at first. On the old-style test things like an acceptable distance for the emergency stop were down to the discretion of the examiner – so in the wet, or on a poor surface he’d have some leeway. The new Euro-style test is all fixed speeds and distances.

I heard the interview with someone on R4 this morning – he made the good point that teaching people to swerve as an instictive thing isn’t a great idea. A swerve could take you into oncoming traffic or into the hazard itself – usually you’d be better off doing an emergency stop to get as much speed off as possible rather than swerving as a first move.

The Quechua 2 Seconds ones are pretty good as long you don’t need it to pack onto a bike or in a backpack. Very easy to get up and down (once you’ve read the instructions) and our 3-man XL one seems pretty well built.

Great for festival use too as they don’t need guy ropes unless it’s really windy, so less for people to fall over.

I’d take the Panda any day over the other choices. They’re very well built for a small, cheap car.

Current news and most columnists’ stuff is all online so no need for paper.

I do subscribe to Time though, worked out at about 45p an issue and there’s plenty of interesting stuff in there.