With India’s 9 and 10 scoring runs for fun, methinks this game is just edging beyond our grasp. Bowl them out in 20 mins and it might be game on, but have them stick around until after lunch and there’ll be next to no chance, even with the likes of Bairstow, Buttler and Ali.

8 down.

An assertive England captain chasing 200 odd in 2 sessions on the final day would be entertaining and what we want to see.

Root OTOH will probably ask his openers to drop anchor for the first 25 overs then – no doubt with himself and AN Other at the crease – still opt to bat it out rather than go for the win.

I admire him greatly as a player, but he’s far too conservative IMO.

Oh well, I was only a few minutes out.

Burns will be gone by 5pm. And if Root goes before close then that’s the end of any chance we have of gaining even a draw in this Test.

So, England have done the first job very well in restricting India to 364, but they really need their openers to stick around like their lives depend on it. Wouldn’t be surprised to see Hameed and Root in before Tea though.

For those asking about external drives, I’ve been using a 1Tb Samsung T7 Touch SSD with my M1 MBA for editing in Final Cut Pro. Any drop in performance over the (exceptionally fast) internal SSD is negligible as I’ve been able to work seamlessly with multiple projects/layers/FX. They’re about £150.

If you need fast, regularly access then get an SSD. If you’re looking to backup/archive then a bigger capacity HDD will do the trick and offer better VFM.

This isn’t a problem unique to rail – basically everything in the public domain is 20 years out of date. Defence is the other classic – you’re procuring for next-generation fighter aircraft in the 90’s for something that will come into service in 2020 so by the time it comes into service, everything it was specced with when the designs were done in 2000 is 20 years old.

+1 from my experience working with the MOD, most notably rolling out an infrastructure that had literally been signed off 5 years prior and was full of obsolete kit.

4 ducks so far today. Can’t see us making 175 let alone 200+. Shocking.

and you must know Judy & Roy if you ride in the Surrey hills?

Would they be the 50+ couple that look like a pair of chilled out Hells Angels?

Currently watching the mixed triathlon relay. GBR’s Jess Learmonth has put Brownlee in a great position with T-B going next then Yee hopefully bringing it home. Really good to watch.

Lloyds here. Works a treat.

Yes, when clubbing back in the 90s and 00s. Haven’t done so since a stag party in 2004-ish.

It would take a lot of alcohol to get me going but, but once I was on the floor or in amongst the throng then there was no stopping me. I can still do some of the moves now and would probably go for it in the right environment. That said, I don’t drink anymore so perhaps I wouldn’t.

Hmm, good sport DrP, I’ve not come across Aquaplanet before. Am liking the look of that Max and maybe the bigger Jupiter for taking the boy out.

All looks genuine judging by their customer photos and Insta.

Might have to take a punt.

Is that 6” Meaco fan honestly enough to cool a bedroom? £50 and £70 variants available at Currys.

Working from a sofa today with fan to the side. Fancied a change from the home office.

Missus is working from the conservatory which is proper scorchio, but she at least had a fan for company.

Seems like temps will be dropping by Thu.

I took my hardtail for a 5 day trek around Cornwall during the 2003 heatwave. Cheekily rode a lot of the coastal path mixed in with a fair bit of road and general XC. A beautiful place to explore for sure and I reckon a road bike would be cool, but IMO the ability to go off the beaten track with a MTB or gravel bike would be my preference.

L

Hmm, £330 for that gunship is a lot of moolah. It’s big but it sure looks rather dull IMO. Reckon it’ll look better in the flesh.

Really sorry to hear this after all you’ve been through. I’m glad you managed to make that last journey and say those final words.

Things will turn around for you. Stay strong buddy.

> checks how many goals England conceded this tournament <

I’m talking about when we’re up against genuinely good opposition. We sit back, invite pressure and finally cave in.

Italy are certainly a lot easier on the eye than previous incarnations and TBF Mancini deserves a lot of credit for that. Still cynical when they need to be yes. Another ref might have sent off Jorginho tonight. Regardless, Southgate should have shifted up a gear in normal time or the first half of ET at the latest. Bringing on Rashford and Sancho knowing they’d have the weight of the nation on their shoulders with barely a kick of the ball is grossly unfair IMO.

This England side have some of the best attacking talent we’ve ever had. Southgate needs to play to their strengths and start applying pressure on decent teams. Rarely are we good enough at defending for long periods – many a tournament defeat has been the result of that.

Credit to the lads and staff for getting this far, but I think with a more positive mindset they would have picked up that trophy in normal time.

Well in Southgate. That defeat is on you you spineless d1ck.

Didn’t look that way in the first half to me.

Not really. England got an early goal, Italy were a bit rocked because they’re not used to going a goal down. We had 3-4 moments of moving the ball down the wing but failed to take advantage. The more the half went on, the more the Italians took control.

England have never been able to keep possession against really good teams, even more so when trying to keep onto a lead. Can’t pass, can’t move. Same old England.

Southgate needs to grow some balls and change it.

As they say, ‘When you go Mac, you don’t go back’. I switched 2 years ago and find Mac OS a far nicer place to spend time compared with the uninspiring world of Windows.

But back on topic, I bought an M1 MBA 16Gb in Nov. I hammer it a lot for work – including Final Cut Pro – and it’s an incredibly capable machine. Seriously rapid, super smooth, perfectly quiet and cool. It’s a game changer IMO. The 8Gb machines are not far behind in terms of speed as lots of people, including professionals, sing their praises. I only opted for 16Gb as it guaranteed me max performance at the time of purchase and a bit more future proofing. If you can justify the £200 then go for it. Re storage, I went with 512Gb and use an external 1Tb Samsung T7 SSD for FCP files – more than rapid enough and far cheaper than upping the SSD at POS.

Garden’s been dragging on for months now. Nowhere to sit out in nice weather is becoming a bummer.

It’s your call, but I’d hang fire another week or two until it’s properly dry. Those day’s will fly by and you do want to look back on a job done well, don’t you?

A friend is a paramedic, he was called out to a 5 year old choking on an apple the other week. 5 of them couldn’t save him, the piece had been sucked right down into the lungs.

That’s awful.

On a similar, thankfully less tragic note, my issue was on a flight next to a 10 year old who started choking on a grape he’d “eaten” an hour before. Somehow it had come back up, got lodged and he was in a bad way. Thankfully the missus got the attention of a medic who freed the offending item.

I’m 3/4 through laying mine and have had to postpone the last 2 weekends because of rain. Same forecast for tomorrow. Using a 6:1 mix with Cementone plasticiser + EasyPrime for bonding (Indian Sandstone).

Personally I would only do an area in light rain and that’s if I knew it was going to be dry for the next 24-48hrs. Any more rain and I’d either call it off or tarp it firm.

I’m most certainly not a landscaper, but I’m pretty handy with a bit of DIY and prefer to be patient and get most jobs right as opposed to rush through and pay for it later.

I’m sure pro’s will happily crack on in some degree of rain.

I used to like Strava’s native route planner but opted out once they pushed it to premium. Trialled OS Maps’ version and found it excellent. Much more accurate for tracking and I now use that when exploring and use Strava solely for recording.

One of my decorating bugbears in seeing people paint over switches/roses/etc. As others have said, it takes 5 mins to unscrew and mini-roller. If wires are short and/or you don’t have much give to get behind the switch thsk stretch it out as far as you can and mask the switch (or protect with a bit of card) then mini roller the wall knowing you won’t mark the switch.

It’s these little 5 min jobs that are easy wins when it comes to improving attention to detail.

The X was also in stock at JL for all of 5 minutes.

X now gone, just the S left.

Very also have the X, shipping 2nd July.

Amazon now have stock of Xbox Series X

Well sh1t the bed, I just jumped on the Argos site and ordered an X for collection from local store on Monday. Hmm…

Well they got 400-something quid of my money this morning…XBox Series X to be picked on Tuesday apparently.

You jammy git. I assume that was from a notification? 3am?

After seeing the E3 highlights I’m starting to sway from an S to an X. Can’t justify either TBH but might allow myself a frivulous moment.

And I can’t seem to sign up to the right notifications on Discord. PS5 yes, X no.

Nope. We got given one as a house warming gift a few years ago. Trialled it once and it was useless. Been in its box ever since.

Outdoors gets done with an old school squeegee and wiper; inside with a Autoglym quick glass and a buffing pad. Job done.

Watched ep1 and ep2 of Time on iPlayer this week. A Jimmy McGovern jobby, so it’s pretty grim. Not sure how ep3 is going to wrap things up – can’t see a positive outcome for anyone.

Also watched The Pact a while back – better than expected after a very generic ep1.

What’s the local consensus on that board Drac? Same price range I’ve been looking at and a want to avoid dubious imports and rebrands etc.

Series S + Game Pass** is great but relatively small capacity, so you’ll likely be chopping games around. It’s small capacity cos it’s SSD which means it starts and games load really quick. You can use ‘cheaper’ storage to expand but there are restrictions. I expect in another 12-18 months there’ll be additional third-party storage options (Seagate monopoly right now).

Yeah, I think it’s Game Pass that’s kind of persuading me. Not worried about 512Gb storage as I’ll get an external drive and swap games around. All in all it seems the most sensible way to mess around with a few Xbox-only games that I’ll probably not play much anyway.

Hmm, I’m now hankering after a Series S. Currently have a PS4 Pro and quite a few games (but not the time to play them) and can’t justify upgrading to the 5. Likewise, £500 on a Series X seems OTT too. Maybe a Series S is the sweetspot for spending a bit of time on the other side of the console fence.

Many people here doing a mix n match of PS4 and Series S?