Ahh, that Outpost. I worked on it, so I'm always interested to see what other people think because I can't detach enough from it enough to see it properly. I think its got its flaws but from a lot of the feedback I come across people seem to be pretty accepting of them. Its a lot of movie for the money and really didn't believe it would ever get finished, because it was such a tough gig. I almost walked off the job and for quite a long time after I regretted not doing so. Anyway. It reminds me a bit of something like Dog Soldiers, a good film if its your kind of film, less so if its not.

what outpost are you talking about?

A place I used to work at was in the middle of a long and faultering process of getting all its computers networks and online (this was late 90's so it was all a bit novel). It had been a half arse affair for a while, so we'd decided to call a local IT contractor in to just get the whole thing rationalised and operational. The IT guy had turned up just as we we're opening up in the morning so we pointed him to the first of the computers and left him to it as we sat and had our usual coffee/gossip/start of day meeting. There had been a documentary about fakes and impersonators on the tv the night before, people who pretend to be paramedics, that guy who pretended to be Stanley Kubrick so that he could get the best tables in restaurants without anyone bothering him because he was a renowned recluse. We we're chatting quite high spiritedly about that and other anecdotes about people who weren't they made themselves out to be.

All the time the IT guy is sitting side on to us at the other end of the room, studious face, occasional taps on the keyboard.

We realise we've been gassing for too long, nearly an hour, so we start to get ourselves together and head upstairs to the office."We'll leave you too it, just call us when you're done there" we call out as we leave

"Erm…. excuse me" the IT guy calls after us "How do you switch this on?"

esp, simply for the startling experience of visiting their premises

muppet

I misread "Kennedy rapped for Powell comment" as "Kennedy rapped Powell comment". Now setting the rivers of blood speech to a hiphop beat would at least be entertaining.

As for Janice Long, does she even realise there's a mic in the room? Its like listening to a surveillance tape of someone talking to their cat.

Keep in mind too that only need to have anything solid where the wheels will actually go. So even if you used concrete you don't need very much of it and you can have living breathing stuff in between.

The duck wins and you want to drink all his prize money! You should spend all the money on stale bread and duck hookers.

His team were in the awkward position of trying to be at the front of the pack to get sprint points, but without trying to speed up the chase. I think Cav's constant looking over his shoulders towards the line seemed to be him trying to be in front by as little margin as possible.

I think from now on they'll stop testing for it (in fact they probably already have) as there will be too many cases to make it worth while, so most people will never really know if they have swine flu or any other similar lurgy. But if it seems like you have, then you'll be treated as if you have. And you should really behave as if you have too.

That really means not following in Dolittle's footsteps and wandering into your local health centre, or going in person to collect your prescription. They are both the sort of places where the staff could do with not being off sick during a pandemic. They are also the kind of places where people with an 'underlying heath problem', for whom a does of flu could well finish them off, tend to be waiting in the queue.

Had much worse in the past,

that might count for something, in major flu outbreaks it generally the older populations that get milder symptoms as they've encountered flu in earlier outbreaks and their immune system deals with it better. Similarly, someone like yourself who works in a populous workplace (like schools, colleges, hospitals) will encounter a lot of bugs too. God knows I did when i worked in a prison . People who've had less exposure in the past tend to get much more severe symptoms. I know people who had blood squirting out of their arses* in the 60's outbreaks, but their parents generation who lived through the really dire epidemics in the early 20th century just shrugged it off.

*I don't think those are the 'flu-like' symptoms my packet of lemsip are referring to.

Incidentally, my folks have just been release back into society after being quarantined for a week – full spacesuit visits the lot. The came up clear for swine flu, although their symptoms were the same. The virus is wide spread enough now that people won't routinely get tested anymore, they'll just be treated and asked to behave as if they have (ie. told to avoid giving lurgy to anyone else). There are definately a lot of coughs and colds around just now too

BigDummy – Member
Parade proudly in my lycra. But I am blessed with the body of a greek god, so it is not particularly embarrassing.

bacchus?

BigJohn – Member
Hmmm…so it wasn't just a dream then?

No it wasn't a dream John, you and your pals really did molest that guy
🙂

42 seconds for £4-5000 worth of stuff? That equates to £240,000 per hour, or £60,000 each.

Shame they can't put all that effort into earning a real wage.

Thats getting close to my hourly rate! The cads!

I used to use Oat milk, but as a way of moving away from milky stuff entirely. Its not very milk-like in the same way as as soya milk, its also nicely simple – just oats and water, so it tastes different to milk but does a similar job. Works better in cereals than it does in hot drinks though.

I gave up milk and cheese about a year ago, and oat milk was a useful transition for things like hot drinks as I'd always had my tea and coffee quite milky. In the end though I felt that milky subsitutes are dodging the issue, particularly as they aren't as easy to lay your hands on, so I decided it was better to make a clean break. All that milk and (most) cheese really does is soften the taste of things and bulk them up, once your out of the habit of it you don't miss it. In fact I took a concerted swing towards small, sharp, strong tasting things and away from long, sloppy voluminous gloop. Swapped milky tea and gallon mugs of latte for thimbles of espresso, swapped lager for whisky etc. It took quite a while longer to get into longer black coffees and black tea. With tea it was actually an adjustment in how long it takes me to drink it, I'll nurse a cuppa for quite a while.

Given that milk and cheese where pretty much my favorite things, now on the odd occasions that I fall off the lorry (float) I wonder why I ever bothered with it in the first place.

Breakfast… espresso, orange juice, toast, marmite
If I've got a bit more time on my hands then Jamie Oliver's Eggy/chilli/crumpets with bacon. Brilliant, sounds a bit whacky but its not. The only down side being chopping chilli at 6am – you will will will rub your eyes.

take the slacker approach – you can get cheap folding steel trestles in Lidl just now for about 6 quid. Get something light but rigid like a door, stick it on top. Thats it. Then you can place your workbench anywhere you like – like out in the room so you can work either side of it, working against the wall can mean you're always casting a shadow over what your working on. You can then work outside when its sunny, take it in the house when you're decorating. Take it to the high street when you want to had out leaflets about animal cruelty or to sell the socialist worker. Sell your home baking from your front drive…. I could go on, and I might in a bit.

A whole new life awaits you. I trestle, do you trestle too?

If your 9.99 mattress isn't 'self inflating', then it probably isn't insulated either. The self inflation is just a by-product of having the insulation inside the matt. The point of thermarests and the like is that they are thermal mats that you can squish down, rather than air bags that you can blow up.

You could always just not answer.

Thats what your landline is for, surely. Only cold callers call your landline, so you never answer it. Your mobile is for people you actually know and want to speak to.

🙂

I find with sliding mitre saws that they are often let down by the blade being able to wander because the sliding mechanism either isn't stiff enough or the bearings have play, only real test is to get your hands on it and give it a bit of a twist – bringing the blade out to full extension and dropping it down as you would to cut and seeing if it can wander side to side or twist either way. I've only ever found one budget slider that behaved well in that respect, an end of line B&Q own brand one I bought about 5 years ago and which clocked up over three years of active service, but since then everything I've tested for less than £500 has been pretty disappointing and instead I've opted for non-sliding saws with bigger diameter blades instead to get accurate cuts and still have a fairly decent capacity.

Broadly I think Erbauer stuff is pretty good though – the right balance of reliable and disposable, ideal for site work where your more likely to have kit knicked than wear it out. But with a sliding saw from Screwfix you're not going to be able to test it without buying it, for the same sort of money I got a non-slidey Bosch with a big 14" blade instead which cuts absolutely true and is much more robust. Easiest place to get you dirty paws on a slider test its accuracy and quality is B&Q, as they have all their stuff sat out on display.

I’m often asked to fax (how quaint) requests on company headed paper for things like order confirmations and credit applications. So for purposes like that (and to be honest they are pretty much the only circumstances these days where I use paper for any business communication or transaction)having the info on the back would be a bit of a dog. Whether there are legal requirements or not you obligation to your client surely is that your work both looks funky and is fit for purpose.

If they are wrong tell them that they are mistaken, they’ve either noted the reg down wrong or something else is amiss. Tell them its in their interest not make mistakes like this in future and see what happens next.

You’ll then discover that contrary to what you believed your wife leads a double life actually works in Tesco, and they are writing to her to give her a bllocking for a) parking in the customer carpark rather than the staff carpark and b) bunking off over an hour early.

In that case you’ll have a new moral morass

edit: blimey you have to type fast on this forum sometimes

When pressed nobody from the vitamin industry can say anything different either.

I’d take any claims Vitabiotics make for their products with a massive pinch of salt. The evidence they cherry pick so that they can add science buzzwords to their packs was revealed recently to be so inappropriate it actually had me laughing out loud.

If you’re not sick, don’t take pills.

I had a road tax reminder come a few years ago, and it prompted me to go looking for my car (no off road parking where I was living and the chances or parking within site of where I lived were always pretty slim). It was in the next street, but not the street where I was sure it was. Grass was starting to grow along the edge of the kerb.

Petrichor

The smell of that comes with the first few drops of rain after a dry spell

She was a Morse Code operator, just like her father before her.

She says she di-dit because her dah-dah-di-dit.

but from the distance looks like a pro riders tan!

so does marmite

The trick with skin so soft is not to imagine its a repellant. It won’t ward them off, it simply bungs up their little beaks when they try to bite you, so you want to be slippery with the stuff. But because it doesn’t repel them you want to get a really good coverage. Luckily because its not nasty in the insecticide sense, and because you can pick it up very cheaply, you can splash it on with gay abandon

I’ve been told marmite it supposed to be be a good repellant, but I’m not sure if I want to go out looking like Al Jolson.

Don’t forget that we’re some of the richest people in the world, so we travel a lot more than than your average joe from Russia or China

Given Jackson’s unreliability [even before he went all dead :-)] that borders on lunacy

Given Jacko’s unreliability can you imagine what the premiums would have been!

I think the route goes to sault – then back down hill again towards the Gorge Du Nesque then back up to the summit. Its a summit finish is it not? On the whole I found the gradient not too bad, it just always that gardient, theres no let up. By the time you get to Sault you’re already a fair way up the mountain, so going back down again to start from the bottom is really pretty fierce.

Bums without thumbs

A trailer isn’t overkill as it doesn’t really carry more volume than you’d get into a pair of panniers (infact the trailer bag I use is a smidge smaller than my panniers)

If its a two wheel trailer like a Y frame then you are saving a lot of effort over using panniers, particularly if the trailer hitches at the rear axel (ones that hitch to the seat post aren’t so clever). You’ll pretty much forget the trailer is there as the weight doesn’t influence the bike.

One wheel trailers like the BOBs offer far less benefit in that resect because you are still having to balance the load so you are keeping that cumbersome feel that you get with panniers and pouring a surprising amount of effort into balancing the load too. BOBs are only really of benefit off road.

Two wheel trailers are also easier to handle when you release them from the bike too, such as when you need to man-handle things onto trains etc if you are making connections along your route.

The only changes I made to my hardtail were good road tyres, not slick mountain bike tyres. Not skinny wee things either – I used Schwalbe Big Apples, you can get them in pretty large sizes, up to 2.3 whilst retaining good rolling characteristics and they are designed to provide suspension/comfort so on stiff mountain bike frames they give a bit of relief from the road. They’re not light, but you’re trucking, not sprinting. We’ve never punctured one in three years. Other than that lock the fork out, or switch to rigid if you like. Bar ends perhaps. I use Ergon grips instead. Your chain rings are going to get minced with the distances and the load. Cheap steel ones will give more life than pimpy alloy ones, but if you are on a budget just use whats on there and worry about what to replace them with when they die.

I’ve found bar bags to be a bit of a pain in the arse. They interfere with your steering a fair bit and they jiggle about a fair bit too. If you are all panniered up then a bar bag is just more weirdness, but If you are using a decent trailer then you’ll really notice the influence of the bar bag. But you do want to have a separate bag of some sort so that you can keep valuable to hand whenever you need to leave the bike and luggage somewhere.

I opted for an Ortleib hip pack. Waterproof enough to protect everything and comfortable enough to wear on stop-start days. Also better for use as hand luggage for days off the bike than a bar bag or pannier would be. On longer stretches I’d simply strap the hip pack around the trailer bag, so again all the important stuff was closest to hand, and you and the bike are unfettered.

The only other thing I started using is a tiny little topeak bag that sits on top of the top tube, just behind the stem. It holds a compact camera, keeping it close to hand for snaps, although its easy to forget about and leave the camera on the bike. Its not fantastically waterproof either. But without it I found myself not bothering to take pictures as digging the camera out was too much of an interuption.

When I was a student we had a regular visiting tutor who was absent for a few months. When she reappeared she was a shadow of her former self, and on walking sticks. I was in a tutorial with her and one of my fellow students wandered in

“whats with the gimps sticks?”

he blurted out. She explained that shes been suffering from an infection of her spinal cord, very debilitating and in the early stages very worrying as it was initially suspected as MS, on the road to recovery now but still with a long way to go…..

“Spinal Cord?” he interrupted

“Don’t worry luv, they can just whip that out these days”

and then he added without a grain of irony

“You won’t feel a thing”

I guess you wouldn’t

I thought it was Maureen from Driving School

I actually think someone else beat Macmillan to it by a few years – but I forget who it is now, I was in the transport museum in glasgow trying to sober up.

Gullible is the only word used in the English language not to appear in the dictionary.

Theres not point telling some gullible that the word gullible isn’t in the dictionary, because they won’t look, they’ll just take your word for it. “Skeptic” isn’t in the dictionary though.

What do you mean “all chaps line up”. They’ve got three presenters right? James May, and Ian and Jeanette Krankie.

Try not to go too OTT. I knew a guy who called his daughter Storm because she was born during the New Year storms. I mean whats wrong with Gayle?