To those who make homemade pizza – What do you cook the pizza on (i know you don't all have pizza ovens in your kitchen) do you use pizza stones ??

A pizza stone is best. Had a quote for a slab of marble from a kitchen/bathroom specialist a while back – £80! **** off. Normally use a couple of 12" circular pizza trays – bought from some high street kitchen appliance shop.

Wasn't he on The Gordon Ramsey programme the other week?

Indeed he was.

Highly recommended by the gf who went there several times while living in Leeds.

The trouble with restaurants (IMHO) is that no matter how good they are, if you get them on a bad day (or night) then it's a right pi55er. One example from experience is a Thai we've visited for years – very good food on every visit except on one occasion when only the head chef turned up but none of the other chefs did. She had a right paddy and turned out distinctly below-par food. Not impressed. Got a discount though.

Making homemade pizza dough is easy, but the pollava that goes with "rolling" it and cleaning up is a fugging nightmare. Worth it for the taste though. Am now looking at buying in some bases from some random online Italian deli – sure would save on time and effort.

Wetherspoons has been selling out-of-date beer fors years. Might not affect their punters, but their staff are still thick as shit and have no bar skills whatsoever.

Head south to Leeds and pay a visit to Salvo's. Some of the best pizzas around (amongst other things).

Depends on your employer's "culture."

IMO best to be on the smarter side of casual, e.g. shoes, smart/dark jeans, shirt, etc. Then again, we have techies who would appear in abstract t-shirts and chinos, and senior managers who's choose trainers, suit trousers, and a white shirt.

Whatever you choose, be yourself and be comfortable.

I've heard Wii Fit is really for entry-level fitness types. Whereas EA Sports Active is more hardcore, especially if you buy additional bands (not necessarily the EA ones, but proper gym ones) for harder resistance.

I'd rather spend a couple of hours in a comedy club with a handful of funny non-PC types, than watch a celebrity comic live (especially for £200). Just buy the DVD when it comes out in a few months.

Probably best to use a warm/honest opening and definitely include a "If you would prefer not to receive future emails, please reply with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject"

I have no problem receiving unsolicited emails because the spam filter picks most of them up. Of those that get through I might follow up with 1 in 10, the others get junked or told to back off.

Is the Hero battery life any better than the iPhones?

That's the only real bug bear I have with the iPhone.

On a good day with average use, I can get 24 hours. On a bad day it can be half that.

No-one seems to have found a fix for this in the UK. HTC won't admit it's a fault, blah blah.

Have kind of given up trying to work it out (you can manage/monitor apps/CPU usage/etc to see what's happening), because no obvious pattern has emerged.

At the end of the day it works, and as a piece of kit it's brilliant.

Just carry a charger or USB cable with you if you're out for most of the day.

+1 for Hero. I'm chuffed with mine.

Excellent browser, with Flash

Seriously customisable, plus apps/widgets for managing:
Facebook
Twitter
Flickr
RSS feeds
podcasts
MP3s
videos
Dropbox
Exchange/Gmail
combining mixed calendars
GPS
sports tracker stuff
BBC iplayer (and live BBC channels)
youtube
loads more

Battery issue aside (which is sporadic), it's a great phone.

Try them both.

Fit women.
Alcohol.
Freebies – relevant to your audience.
Anything you can demo.
Case studies, i.e. have a happy client on the stand with you.

+1 for American Werewolf.

Watched it for the first time aged 12 or so – really shat me up, especially the nazi werewolves breaking into the house.

I still think of various scenes when I visit similar places, e.g. any moorland, small pubs where everyone appears to examine you as you walk in, the underground, etc.

If you want to add some strategy/RPG elements to your shoot-em up then take a look at Fallout 3.

I don't think there are any free downloads available (because the map is open and therefore too big to contain in a sensible download), so you'll need to buy it. £15 or so on ebay, or £20+ for the GATY edition with all the expansion packs. Have been playing it for a couple of weeks and it's pretty fooking cool.

Check out IGN review

My next gen console will be a PS4. Shan't bother with the xbox 720 or whatever they call it.

Check out Project Natal … you might well change your mind …

As Mike says, it'll be interesting to hear what Platini has to say about this. As great a player as he was, he sure is on a different planet in his new role.

As for Henry, I'd f^&king love it if FIFA somehow opted for a rematch – can't see it happening though. But Henry should at least be banned from all football for a considerable period of time. Cold. Calculated. He can f&*k off now – I've no respect him anymore whatsoever – one of the best players of his generation? F*(k that. A cheat, that's what he is.

How the f^&k can he even celebrate now the whistle's gone? I'm no Ireland fan but that's a f^&*ing disgrace.

Blatant f^&*ing cheating. He's gone down in my estimation big time.

I've used some Endura thermal bib thingies for a few winters. Never had a problem in any conditions; snow, rain, etc. About fifty notes in a sale IIR.

While I agree prevention at source is probably best, it's also wise to upload all your bike details (and anything else) to Immobilise.

Clicky

I haven't read through the whole thread so don't know where your garage is in relation to your home. But one thing I can recommend (from experience) is mechanically enabling the door to only be opened from inside, i.e preventing the door from being opened from outside. Useful if you can only enter your garage from a side-door in your house. Also depends what access you need day to day, etc. But certainly worth looking at for times when you're away or at least overnight.

SM

The Corkscrew is the bit (in the Gorrick area?) that rolls up and down a canyon-type trail? If so, I seem to find it only half the time I'm there – the other times it seems to go hiding.

Isn't there another DH type trail (that some might call Corkscrew?) near Ceasars Camp that kind of runs along the side of a "hill"?

If you're on oil / LPG now, would it majorly influence your choice if you had to move again? ie is it that much more expensive / hassle? And does the price fluctuation thing worry you?

Nope. It would be a contributing factor, but not a telling one.

IMO, if you have a sound heating/hot water system and a decent fuel tank (for oil or OPG), then you're less likely to have any hassle. All you've got to do is buy say 1000 litres once a year and you're done.

THe only concern I would have longterm is the possibility of oil rising dramatically, let's say 100% over 5-10 years. Could happen. But even then, that's what, an extra £500/year (for us) … okay, that's maybe not afforable to everyone, but for most it's probably something you can live with.

We have a rural 3 bed cottage with single-skin walls (18th-19th century), shaky old lattice windows and your average olde worlde roofing. 4yr old oil boiler and rads.

Currently paying approx £400 pa for heating – we use the immersion for hot water cos it's cheaper. Tend to buy from Boilerjuice. All in all, no complaints.

Previous to this I lived in a huge 2 bed Victorian house that was equal in size to many 5 bed homes, but it ran off OPG. Horrendously expensive. Heating system was rubbish – we could have it on 30deg and still be freezing. It cost me nearly £500 just for one month in March 06. Spoke to British Gas about getting a mains supply and they said we'd be looking at £10k minimum.

If you get a chance to check out some bills then do so.

Wincy Willis float your boat eh Spacemonkey?

Having just done a Google I'll say thanks but no thanks.

Most female newsreaders, especially Fiona Bruce and Susanna Reid. And the occassional weathergirl.

<<<<Star Wars geek alert.>>>>

I should have got the Firefox 'Lucas' Add-on

Hhhmph, strong is the sarcasm in this one …

It's the FBI – you gotta follow their instructions or you'll be in trouble :lol:

Malenium Falcon

Ahem, you've got to be sh1tting me, right?

yes there is some very old / interesting motor cross stuff on Butter hill if you are feeling brave.

Hmm, I see Butter Hill is just beside Butter Bottom … not the place you want to venture through in the dark 8O

As CG says, park at the Look Out and head west. You'll get a nice little warm-up along the way.

Q: Are there any sections on the Broadmoor side of the 3095?

Used to be a supplier of Dell into the NHS and SME/corp. IMO, generally not very nice or competent people – from account managers to customer service to tech support. Very very profit driven. I remember getting them new customers only for them to market to them directly 3-6 months later, and undercut what I was then offering. Difficult to compete on that level, even when you're a proper VAR, because the customer is often tempted to use the Dell VA aspect and save a few quid too. Lost a few customers to them, but a few soon came back and switched manufacturers.

Only if I was desparate would I buy a Dell. Great kit when it works, but a generally horrible experience if you have to deal with them.

Thankfully those days are behind me.

SM

Finally got the green light to add some social media to our portal. Okay, it's only a blog and forum to begin with, but it's progress :-)

Probably a bunch of other stuff but can't remember anything particular outstanding.

Think I'll go and make some Chai Tea now …

No probs – PM me at:

sjp03uk at googlemail dot com

The other thing you could try is the following:

– set up a gmail account and havie your Talk21 forward everything to it
– sync your gmail account with your Hero (which is what it's designed for)
– set up a "Send mail as" account in your gmail to be the same as your Talk21 email address (this means all replies to your gmail emails will go to your Talk21 account, which will in turn forward them to you)
– start using gmail as your primary account: it'll sync perfectly with your Hero, and any time you send an email from the web, you can have your Talk21 account set as the default for replies, etc.

I did the same when migrating from Yahoo to gmail a couple of years ago. Works perfectly. :-)

If you want to give it a try and need a hand with the settings then let me know.

SM

I have a Hero but use Exchange and Gmail, so I can't help specifically with Talk21.

Try the Android and Hero forums:

Android Hero Forum[/url]
HTC Hero Forum[/url]
HTC Handsets Forum[/url]

Lots of UK users in the above so you should get some replies.

SM

Depends how far the garage is from the flat, and whether you can run a permanent connection, i.e. an armoured cable run (above or below ground).

Ask a local sparky – can't do any harm to get a quote. We paid about £300 for a 10m run (but that included lighting and multiple sockets in the garage).

SM

Project Natal looks interesting too.

+1 Xbox 360
+2 Project Natal – looks absolutely mental, and possibly a little eerie (if you're into VR/AI type stuff)

IIRC if he hit you on the front panel you should have stopped (not pulled out – your at fault), if he hits you further back, he should have had time to stop (he's at fault)… though I don't know where I picked up this info from to be fair, talk to your insurance company

Not strictly true, although I agree it's a grey area at times.

I had an accident 10 yrs ago when some d1ckhead white van man swiped the front of my car off (bumper/grill and misc bits) on the A2/M25 roundabout. Witnesses wouldn't stop, so it was me vs him. He agreed it was his fault, then when I phoned his employer they said they'd fired him that day and weren't accepting liability. Long story cut short = I had a hire car for 8 weeks which cost something like £2000, and then I suddenly received a call saying his insurers were paying up. Happy days in the end.

Whatever you do, be thorough.

The ones that really get my goat are the groups that (take up the whole trail and) look behind, see me/us bearing down on them (albeit at a respectable speed at this point), and simply turn around and continue on their merry way without even stepping aside one inch.

I mean, WTF is it with these people? Fair enough they might have had issues with MTBers in the past, but don't be so f&*^ing ignorant as to label us all like that. Or maybe they're just ar5eholes.

And another bugbear of mine is MTBers that let their dogs loose on singletrack trails. This happened again at Swinley on Saturday – bloke pulls aside to let me past, then 50m on his dog leaps out in front of me and I have to hit the anchors big time. Whoever you are your dog could've caused a stack AND been injured in the process. Sort it out FFS. This is the main reason that whenever I go running with our dog, we stick to fire roads and other trails where I know he's going to be safest, i.e he's not going to ambush bikers and they're not going to do the same to him.

Rant over.

+1 for Crawley – may have been the UK's biggest boom town in the 80's but parts of it are a proper sh1thole