well just the phrase "I'm a PC" was apple's idea, microsoft are trying to do their best to turn that into a positive attribute.

Microsoft's model has always been 'be second and be better', leave the thinking to other people, then arrive late and jump on the bandwagon. Thats how most people shop too, so it works.

I think the 'drill proof' ones have a wee ballbearing in the centre (of the type you open with those funny circular keys / bic biro) that makes the drill difficult to aim down the centre of the barrel.

I think in general thieves favour speed and quiet, so something a bit quieter, quicker and more brutal than a drill or a cordless anglegrinder would be favoured. A big metal bar for instance.

Mine is a Kenwood BM350, not sure I'd recommend it, it does work well but the settings are a little restricted and the build quality's not great- the hook's seizing up a little and some of the bolts have rusted (they're not in the bread, so it doesn't matter, but it's not a good sign). But, it's been used every 2 days for a year which is probably a lot more than most will ever be used.

I've got the same thing or a BM250, I'm not sure, the instruction booklet covers both machines with variations for each model, but nothing on the machine identifies it (i threw the box away on the day of purchace). And thats my biggest beef with it, its an OK machine for the money, tiny bit flimsy, and the beeps are awful and too loud, but the instruction book that comes with its is very scant, to the extent that the the biggest button (the fast baking setting) is so barely covered that you'll never make use of it.

The hole in the bottom of machine bread doesn't bother me, i eat the stuff rather than take pictures of it.

The trouble with/for people who wear wigs is once you start you can't stop. Because wearing one is a lie, and to stop you have to admit to lying, and to being bald, and to being the sort of person thats so worried about being bald that they'd wear a wig and lie about it. And of course theres the point where everyone knows you are wearing a wig, but you keep on wearing it so you are lying even though everyone knows its a lie.

Paul Daniels was the funniest, he started wearing a wig because he was worried about going bald, but didn't want to be seen to go bald before he started wearing one. So he started to wear one while he had a full head of hair. Then didn't go bald. Then he stopped wearing it (by the time spitting image were making fun of his wig he'd stopped wearing it but the press hadn't noticed). Then he went bald.

mmw – take an icecube and crush it in your teeth carefully and controlled – you can melt the ice away far faster than if you just hold it in your teeth with no pressure. While not conclusive, I'd expect I create as much pressure with my skates as I could with my teeth.

for gods sake buy some sensodyne first though

Good point about cutting the frame, someone with enough knowledge of the bike market (ie that its better value to strip and sell the parts than the bike) won't bother tackling the lock, just cut through the coke can thin frame tubes instead. So an opportunist looking for something to flog in the pub for smack money would probably attack the lock, bike thieves who know how to fence the goods would attack the frame.

But for the lock itself filling the lock as much as you can and making the lock as inaccessible as you can are the two tricks- if its a time-consuming fiddle to get at the lock and open it with a key then you are adding discouragement to anyone trying to break it. Two different modes of locking are another trick. If me and the GF are riding together i carry one type of lock and she carries another. But if I'm riding a decent bike I do just that, I ride it. I don't leave it places, that what cheap bike are for.

typical for the UK. Cold (below 7deg)

not quite – our average maximum temperature dips to around 7 degrees for the very coldest part of the year, but not for the whole winter, but its just that and average, so in many areas, such as the lower lying coastal areas where a great many people live, there will be weeks,days or parts of the day, or even winters when its quite a bit warmer than that.

If you live somewhere with a bit more exposure, altitude and less road treatment and do most of your travelling in that environment then you can make a case to fit winter tyres yourself, but for many its not an effective solution you can enforce for everybody in this crazy unpredictable lets-talk-about-the-weather country we live in. But if you stopped gritting you'd have to enforce it.

And if we stop putting salt on the roads we'll be over run by slugs before you know it

Without really knowing what you want to do…. Some kind of non-profit incorporation is kind of the defacto set up if you want to apply for grants and funds, although its not out of the question for a run-for-profit company to apply for funding so long as they deliver their project and account for it to show that theres no accrual of profits. Some organisations actually have two legal entities – one a charity one a business, the business can act as a contractor to the charity but also delivery activities that are within the organisations aims, but don't necessarily pass the 'test' as charitable. I'm not sure if CIC's require a voluntary board they're a bit new-fangled.

My thoughts are though: If you are only looking at doing this thing part time, why go to all the ball ache of setting up an enterprise. Might there be a body/charity/enterprise out there through whom you could offer and deliver your service? If there is money to be applied for, or which changes hands it goes through their books, if there are fees to be be paid for your time – they are paid as a wage to you. The service is still yours to supply, and you can take yourself and your service on from one body to the next.

I say this because there is all sorts of support, encouragement (and funding) to get a social enterprise off the ground, but bugger all out there to sustain one. But if your project can add a bit of spice and value to someone elses service then that, in the long run, might be better for you.

I should add…… Many (all?) non profit structures require some form of constituted, voluntary board. If you are giving yourself a payment that board doesn't include you.

Thats why its referred to as the 'voluntary sector' even though plenty of people get paid. If you create a board the organisation is theirs, and not yours. Legally they carry the liability and nominally they can fire you. Having a voluntary board is a right royal pain in the tits for everybody involved (you and them) frankly.

If its a smallscale scheme, and as you suggest your notion is to pass profits on to other good causes, then I'd rather look at operating as a standard business / sole trader but make formal donations to charity and write those donations off against tax

Generally social enterprises plow any surplus back into whatever service they provide themselves rather than distribute profit out to other good causes.

Being not-for-profit doesn't mean you can't draw a wage, you just not accumulating or distributing profits (to shareholder for instance) over and above wages and costs of service delivery. At the same time your activity needs to be off benefit to somebody.

Perhaps look in Community Interest Companies as a model of a business (rather than a charity) that is not for profit

birds do have to die at sometime

They do, and once they've been lying dead for about a fortnight, full of maggots and stink thats when my old cat would 'catch' them and proudly strut into the the house with it and drop it at our feet, or if i was really honoured – on my pillow.

OK – heading across to the west of Lancashire

A man walks into a St Helens shop

"Hello I'd like to buy some turps"

"Certainly sir, would you like audio turps or video turps?"

I tried to do that thing people do when they keep a sneeze in. My lungs ballooned out through my ears like airbags being deployed.

It was on a first date, apparently girls don't like that kind of thing.

Where abouts in Ayrshire are you skidartist?

The sleepy hamlet of Sorn, but shhh, nobody knows it exists. Ayrshire is rubbish everybody! Do you hear that, its shit!

I had to practically kick my workshop door down today, the walls/roof are black so when theres a bit of sun the snow melts, runs down the door jams, which aren't black, where it freezes again

Having kicked it open I immediately regretted it, as theres not really a way of kicking it shut again from the outside. Took me the best part of an hour doing ice-joinery with a pickaxe to get it closed and locked up again. Will probably need to fit a new one if I open it again before the thaw.

It doesn't mean that he is paying lots of people to do other work behind the scenes

Sorry if I'm a bit confused by that – whose are all the names in the credits then? Its not just him and some bloke paid £5 and hour to hold the camera.

To his credit in this day and age when there are literally hundreds of channels to choose from, when his show is on most of the people who are watching a TV are watching it. If he's expensive thats why, but he's not as expensive as he could be and at the time he signed his contract there were plenty of bidders who were offering him more money.

-14 here in Ayrshire, out in my slippers with a digital thermometer, very still though so it doesn't feel all that cold. I was expecting lower as we've been regularly measuring -12 when the forcast was -5.

I was in there maybe 10-20 seconds and my jeans froze up.

I used to make big (half ton and more) cast ice sculptures, we'd make moulds and take them to big refrigerated warehouse to freeze them. We were working on one during a really hot july, +30 degrees outside -25 degrees inside. We had mould set up and were packing up to leave when I decided to run back in one last time and check everything, couldn't be bothered getting kitted up again so just ran back inside in shorts and sweaty cotton tshirt. Our stuff was at the far end of the warehouse, so my clothes were going stiff before I'd even reached it. Checked everything, ran back to the door and pulled the chain to open it and for about 5 seconds it jammed, motors making a 'going to burn out and fuse everything' sound. My life flashed before my eyes I can tell you.

or maybe these that are a little less hardcore[/url]

Places that sell snow chains for cars also sell snow-chain-like appendages for shoes[/url]

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mudshark – Member
I wish I had mittens on strings. I used to love having those…
It really is the perfect idea – solves a problem simply leaving no downside. My wife drops hers too often so will suggest.

Only down side is if the string is too short. You wave with one hand and punch yourself in the teeth with the other.

Michael Flattley's socks are on strings.

Is a Porche that german car driven by men with small cocks

if its ice/packed down snow and its pretty dry rather than slushy then ash gives pretty good grip, if you know anybody with a fire at home.

The countries that don't use salt or use studs or whatever do so because their weather is predictable enough that you can expect to fit a certain set of tyres for the season. When it snows it stays snowy, its snowy everywhere and its like that for weeks/months

Here snow that sticks for more than a day or two is rare, and on most routes thats effectively cleared by 10 oclock. Even in this freak weather, chains or studs would be a godsend for the first 800 yds of my journeys, after that I'd be on tarmac for 90% of the rest of any trip.

So for our weather, 29 years out of 30 it makes more sense to expect people to run on standard tyres and clear the roads for them.

Where does all this salt go after the thaw? Eek!
Winter road salting is the reason the sea is salty – fact.

I thought it was the reason you don't see slugs in winter.

600 ton isn't going to go very far though, barely more than half a day's gritting for most authorities.

You do have to wonder at the impact of the salt though, here is scotland there must have been nearly half a million tons spread over the last two weeks. You can see why some countries don't bother with it at all.

The same as you use for everything else

Echoing Glenp, When I lived in the Highlands, much as you you'd expect to see 4X4s everywhere the most popular car on the road seemed to be a VW Polo. Small, economical, reliable, less likely to crash than a 4×4 during the 50 weeks of the year when the roads are clear.

I've got a nasty cyst on my bum too.

I've got post traumatic stress disorder, its just come on in the last minute or two

The thing is, we're shooting the horse after the gate has been bolted. There haven't been conditions like this around here for 20 years, probably won't be again for at least as long, any concessions I make now – change of vehicle, buy different tyres or chains – I'll never use them as intended. The time to buy them would have been 3 weeks ago.

well living in the sticks, on a big sporting estate with private, untreated roads leading to hilly irregularly treated roads and a foot of snow that has been lying for two weeks (and now packed down to 3" of ice) heres the observations from me and my neighbours cars:

My Sprinter – wholly useless
I hired a diesel focus with traction control as a substitute run about – I was pretty desparate too, required quad-bike assistance where the Golf and Leon below got out with the odd shove. I only planned to hire it for a day, it took me another 2 days to be able to get it back.

My sister in laws M reg Legacy – 4 wheel drive and narrow tyres – excellent, but could still require a push from stationary on soft snow.

My GF's 2005 Seat Leon basic spec – pretty decent, never got into more trouble than a quick push would solve

Neighbour No1's 07 Vectra – one night sleeping on a strangers floor just 8 miles from home and several enegetic sessions pushing and shovelling it up the castle drive, some of which had to be aborted
Neighbour No1's 08 Audi A4 – big wide tyres, waited till the snow was packed down before he even tried to move it

Neighbour No2's New Golf fairly basic spec – as good as the Seat, better than the focus

Neighbour No 3's Big new Audi estate with huge tyres…. she never brought it onto the estate for two weeks, it was in trouble within yards, so opted to dig a parking space for it beside the road walk the last 1/4 mile instead

The Groundsman's Ford Fiesta tall thing – pretty capable

His Lordship's car of choice over a rangerover and BMW 3 Series Coupe…. An 03 Passat Estate, he's a racing driver though, I don't think the RR would have been enough fun, or perhaps he was happier to risk smashing up the Passat

But the outright winner, was the young lass in the flat with a Mark 2 Micra that has been wholly oblivious to the snow and ice through out – deep snow, compacted slush, solid bumpy ice – its never need so much as a push from the outset

So – front wheel drive, light car with the skinniest tyres you can find is the answer.

Shame nobody makes them anymore.

fag ends around all the doorways

I find the best solution for finally unclogging the system is to stop the car for a while once the engine is warm and switch the engine off, the heat from the engine then soaks up through the bonnet rather than being circulated by the cooling system. Not much help on a 10 minute commute, but on longer trips I just pull over after half an hour and get a coffee, when I come back they're sorted.

Works with some cars but not others, my old polo used to have the water jets on the bonnet but about 4 inches behind the fire wall, where warmth would never ever reach them. My current merc van has them on the wiper blades leaving about a foot of the water line exposed to windchill.

I think with some designs it doesn't seem to matter how good screenwash is if the jets or the waterlines are exposed enough they just seem to freeze anyway

That Korean word means "Pityful are the president's siblings – will they come back to estate agentry?"

Satan oscillate my metallic sonatas

Aibohphobia

But I think the Germans have it with Nebelregennegerleben (the life of a black man in rain and fog)

Or you can have this in Korean – ????? ??? ????? ??? ?? ??? but I've no idea what it means

15 seconds from the top back down to the bottom again though, if someone gives you a leg up over the handrail.

cheap flights and a hotel

If its not an active nest just leave it be – partly because they are lovely to look at, but also (I'm told) because wasps are pretty territorial so the presence of a nest will deter others from nesting.

Thats the theory I'm going with so I'm leaving the one in the workshop be (mainly for the reason its nice to look at). If it die in some horrible beard-of-wasps-anaphalactic-shock-horror this coming summer its because non of you stopped me.

First choice is to ride with my GF, second choice is to ride alone. There are kinds of riding I like that she'd rather not do, so thats the kind of riding I keep back for when theres not an opportunity to ride together.

I'd rather not ride than ride with groups of other people whether its friends or strangers, thats my idea of hell.

If you've got some support then you don't need to worry about anyone, people can bail if they need too. If you are unsupported though one persons unprepareness will impact on everyone else. I would imagine for the non-cycling members of the party it would just be time on the bike rather than fitness that matters, I reckon its more a question of how comfortable someone would be on a bike for 24hrs as much as how fit they are.

A sport yesterday

You see, they are capable of going off road! Most other cars wouldn't have been able to make it all the way through that deep snow between the tarmac to the wall.