Photograph the bike and as belt and braces when you're next getting any work done in a shop ask them to do you a valuation. I've usually done the home work, itemised all the parts and figure out the value, emauled it to the shop, they print it on their headed paper. Bingo

The O2 Arena is a re-name of the big white tent we all payed for in east London

We only paid for the dome if we bought lottery tickets.

Believe it or not, the Dome was the most popular pay-in attraction in the UK in 2000, it failed to reach a forecast 12m visitors, but even with concerted negative campaigns throughout the press it still outsold everything else in the UK.

Tell them you're Jewish 🙂

Really though some friends have invited you out for a treat. If Christmas isn't a celebration for you that fair enough.But regardless of anything spiritual or festive its a long weekend that almost everybody gets to take off and enjoy a bit of time with people they like. Don't make baggage out of it being Christmas, enjoy a warm gesture and warm food at a cold, dark horrible time of year.

Christmas for us overworked Northern Europeans is just tired people huddling for warmth.

I hired one when they first came out, the smallest, standard transit sized one. Struck by it being very quick, but not having the brakes or steering you'd wish for. Very thirsty too. Feels like its got the engine of a much larger van in it.

It main flaw for me is that the bulkhead slopes backwards with the result that an 8×4 will fit flat on the floor, as it would in a transit, but not on its edge as the bulkhead pushes into the load area. Its only a matter of a couple of inches, but thats an incredibly dumb mistake to make with a van for the UK market

The panels all seem very thin, door skins squishing about when you push the doors shut.

The one I had was on delivery milage and the third time I closed the load doors the entire locking mechanism dribbled out through bottom of the door. The grub screw that had failed would be more suited to a pair specs

Ratner jewellery

Almost all jewellery isn't worthy of the material its made from. Gerald Ratners error was in saying so.

Others are noted for 'doing a ratner' such as

Asked in an interview in 2001 to clarify the target market for the Topman clothing chain, the firm's brand director, David Shepherd, replied: "Hooligans or whatever."
He went on: "Very few of our customers have to wear suits for work. They'll be for his first interview or first court case."
The company later suggested that the word "hooligan" would not be seen as an insult among its customers.

But if Shepherd didn't wipe £500 million off topmans share value then he was right

8track didn't fail,

Still used comercialy to record live events (well pre HD anyway) how else can you record all 8 cameras at a football game simoutaneously?

You're thinking of multitrack recording. 8 track cartridges appeared almost the same time as cassette tapes and an early means of listening to music on the move (they were developed by Lear Jet) and popularly fitted in cars. They were one continuous loop of tape inside a cartridge. Prior to 8 Track Cartidges and Cassette Tape tape had to be manually threaded into reel to reel machine, which was really difficult to do while driving a car and calling your mum on the phone.

Successful in their day but cassettes were cheaper, smaller and could be rewound. Similarly to Betamax and DVD HD there were too many competing platforms and the music publishers didn't want to support all three platforms (tape, 8 track and vinyl) so 8 track was edged out. They had a longer stint in the US than Europe, not that much shorter as a commercial format than cassettes. But somehow they became a byword for obsolescence.

Discussed here but can't find a video

It involves a length of rope, I've watched it being done and thought "That looks simple enough" and then though "I've no idea what i've just seen"

her orignal idea was to wee in the potted plants but was worried they'd whither.

the potted plants are innocent in all this – the place to wee is in the boss's shoes / tea / pocket / eyedrops

Which of course is a load of bollocks

Looking into it its only partial bollocks – the die cut sleeve was only of the early copies, so they would have been the expensive ones, they dropped the die cutting pretty swiftly.

Or the sleeve for the 12" version of Blue Monday. The biggest selling 12" of all time, but the sleeve cost more to produce than the record sold for, so the more copies they sold the more money they lost.

The Shoe Fitting Flouroscope perhaps, a device used in shoeshops that gave a realtime xray image of your own feet to give a faux science sheen to selling childrens shoes, all with a bonus dose of radiation. Kiddy put their feet in the machine and had a scope they could see the live xray image, there was also a scope for mummy and one for the shop keeper too, so the three of them were standing in a circle getting irradiated. Fairly risky to customers, frequently fatal to shop keepers

10,000 were in circulation in the US, so a commercial success, but a model employed to promote the machine received such severe radiation burns she had to have her legs amputated

I have a notion of running central heating off of a Tandoor and having lovely fresh nan breads as a byproduct of running a bath.

I thought it was more that there was more software available on VHS than Betamax.

That was symptomatic of their being fewer machines in circulation. Four manufacturers were originally licenced to make VHS machines while only Sony was making the Betamax. So in the shop 4 our of 5 of the machine for sale were VHS. By the same measure as a distributor 4 out of 5 of your customers have a VHS, so which platform are you going to invest in?

But like I say Betamax / Beta SP / Digibeta persisted as a production platform rather than consumer platform

One guy (whos name I forget) was responsible for the both the idea of lead as a petrol additive and the adoption of CFC as a refrigeration gas and propellant. Neither being poor decisions within the close confines of workings of either process but massively problematic elsewhere

sorry, yes poorly designed manufactured,

In that sense Betamax for instance is bad example as it was much the superior product in the showdown with VHS. However Beta, being better has had a long innings in the professional workplace.

So its an example of a good product but marketing fail, largely because Sony were too precious with licensing it to other manufacturers, so there were just more VHS machines to choose from, in the same way that PCs are a more successful platform than Macs if you measure success as universal adoption. IBM believed that it would be fine to allow other manufacturers to make IBM compatible machine on the basis that everyone would know that IBM made the original and best PCs, Apple didn't trust anyone else to make Macs that would work well enough (they allowed licencing for a brief period but quickly pulled the plug)

But if you look at the market now was it IBM or Apple that made the better decision. I doubt Apple are unhappy. Whos reading this on an IBM?

DaRC_L – Member
Samuri supplemental request – can you do a pie chart?

Plenty of people work on their own – taxi drivers, truck drivers, snipers, paper boys. So being alone isn't an issue, but breaks are, and in some lines of work, like truck driving, they are not just on offer they are enforced

When I worked for a local authority we had a public venue (gallery) which was open of a saturday. It took one person to run if for the day, but I also had to work the saturday too simply so that they had some one to cover their lunch and two 15 minute breaks.

If its only part days being worked, or part of the day she's alone then that might be different.

regardless of legality it is a pretty stupid position for an employer to put someone in

how to get money off for buying two?

Ask them how much they'll cost if you buy 20, if they say they'll cost £X each say "Great I'll have two at £X just now, and if I like them I'll be back for the other 18"

And in all seriousness, warrentee is everything. LCD TVs are throw-away technology compared to old CRTs. They are throw away technology compared to socks! I used them for exhibtions (LCDs broadly, not the one you are looking at specifically) and in every case have to replace broken down screens regularly, some only last a month. If theres four TVs in a show we'll always keep two in reserves and can expect to use those reserves, buy more reserves and use them too in a 12 – 18 month run.

I've got two, new, boxed Polaroid TVs sitting by my back door waiting to go to the tip, and one working Wharfdale one next to my desk just now that was the only one left working out of 6 bought for a 9 month exhibition (the show only used two screens)

If you haven't read the mag buy one or two and subscribe if you like it, you're not likely to find it in a supermarket, but WHSmiths should have it and a lot of bike shops do too. Its horses for courses really as to how much you'll like it.

I used to buy MBRs and (and MBUKs if they had a freebee on the cover) as often as I saw them and have been buying Singletrack since issue one. But that was when I was new to riding, building up my first bike, finding out where to ride, riding, learning more about what I need from my bike, changing something…….. Ultimately though there is only so much to learn about it all though so after 10-12 years you might find your milage varies with magazines of any sort. But I pretty much put MBR down when I picked up my first copy of singletrack.

I've been reading the mag long enough and remember how refreshing it was when it first appeared that I simply consider it worthy of patronage. Do I need to read it? Not really, I figured out what I'm doing and why a long time ago. But I read it anyway.

i am a solic…..

stopped reading right about there.

Its a shame if you did because thats where it started to get interesting

The OP was hardly running with scissor Algarve

Slips and trips aside, the carpark, as a public space, must have been designed to be lit, there are minimum stands to be maintained, not just to stop you tripping over tramps but also to discourage you cars from being burgled and your fellow students from being mugged and raped, and to allow them to go about their business without fear.

Regardless as to how people might feel about our compensation culture I would have expect more than a shrug from the university management. I would expect them to shit themselves.

only if you sell tickets! 🙂

The 'hungry people' are entertainers, they are taking part in a game show, aware wholly as to how their actions will play. Their being hungry was part of the entertainment, their solution to being hungry was a decision taken to entertain. They haven't been abandoned in the wild to fend for themselves, they're in the grounds of a luxury hotel, being looked after by a massive production team, knowing full well they'll get fed when need be. And the buck stops with that production team, they are in their care.

There are charities that collect and clean carpets ready for resale, being charities their prices are pitched at the poor so very cheap. They'll even fit them for very few quid. I used the lovely Spruce [/url] in Glasgow for carpets for film sets. Maybe there is someone similar in your neck of the woods, google carpets and recycling I guess.

Alternatively a site like Gumtree might have some for sale or maybe even for free.

Given that your landlord has carpeted the garage is he expecting the garage to be used as a garage? If he is then a bit of oil is fair wear and tear. (or is it a lot of oil?)

Before you go to too much trouble to replace it have a chat with him, it could be he put the carpet in there for want of anything better to do with it. He might not give a toss what happens to it.

The issue that is being raised is with animals being killed within context of making entertainment. Its not against the rules for animals to be killed as part of filming, and in itself its not necessarily immoral either. But the statutory position is that an animal welfare authority is present on set. Because the rat chomping was seemingly unscripted (oh really) no representative was there, so the producers broke the rules by not stopping it, or by at least waiting and calling in a representative.

Regardless of whether the manner of the actual dispatching of the rat was cruel or not, its within the context of making entertainment that the law was broken.

Try these people for bestest value[/url]

Disappointed, thought this was going to be a topiary thread

Our local driving instructoress was a riot. It was a dual control car, and apart from the first lesson where you're being taught to pull away she'd never actually used the dual controls to override me.

One day she asks me to pull over next to a young lady eating jelly beans (who turned out to be her daughter). She reaches out, snatches the sweets and "go! go! go!' we speed away (within the parameters of a driving lesson) further up the street as I overtook a milkfloat the pedals seem to disappear from under my feet. She'd overridden me so that we could stay parallel to the float. She was trying to flick jellybeans into the empty bottles.

She was very very good though, everybody she taught passed first time. But the only sage advice i remember was

"do as I say, not as I do"

as she took the wheel at the end of a lesson realising we were the wrong side of town and late for the next lesson. The following minutes were very alarming. You know when you're a passenger and you find yourself trying to brake with an imaginary peddle, very strange sensation when there is actually a pedal there.

A long but interesting article about how trackable we are in the modern world.[/url]

For instance, from a photo on flickr you can identify the camera that took the picture, you can then start to look for all the other pictures the camera took.

However I doubt this is part of a burglars MO, opportunity is the main driver for theft. Opportunity is like catnip to burglars, even with a resolve to go on the straight and narrow.

The only person I was bullied by is a long time dead now too. Self destruction but not suicide as such.

Broadly though, I wonder if people who were bullies remember themselves to be, unless someone directly reminds them. I wonder if they fully understood what they were doing.

I was on a late bus in brum once and a guy got on to discover four of his childhood bullies at the back of the bus. If those guys could have seen into the future they would have chosen anyone else to pick on. The scenes that followed we're violent but blimey they were fierce! The rest of us found ourselves as the jury in a kangaroo court.

that wally jobs

he he. He bought pixar for 10 million. sold it for 7.4 billion. And Nextstep/OSX have been nothing but fail! What a fud he is!

I'm aware of afermarket batteries (I've got one for my powerbook) but non when I was looking exceeded the original spec. Mine was good to begin with, better than my memories of the original when new, but the performance dropped off very very quickly indeed

I thought the jeans thing was from prison and was to denote that you're up for a bit of rumpy pumpy with another man.

Go tell them that, we'll stand back and watch. 🙂

Pizza Delivery Bloke
Public Art Events Technician
Prison Pottery/art/woodwork Teacher
Art Gallery Technician (freelance)
Art Transport and Technical Services
Art Gallery Technician (freelance again)
Local Authority Arts Officer
Art Gallery Director

Now a freelance film production designer/ film construction manager/ exhibition and public art fabricator/ exhibition curator/ arts consultant/ video artist/ touring exhibitions contractor/ furniture and interiors designer and fabricator/ architectural prototyper/ and I occasionally lop the bollocks off of fibreglass reindeer- be warned, another patient has turned up at the workshop and I will post photos again!

Who needs facebok when you can have your data mined here!

Its just been introduced by the announcer as an "episode premiere", not showing repeats has become something to openly boast about!

An Oyster and Heel Bar

half size waxworks of TV's Tony Robinson?

Half size? You're getting into quantum territory

I think even if we all mucked in I doubt we'd manage to run a bath