The National. Have had their two most recent records for a while, but they were bought in a ‘binge’ CD buying session so never properly listened to them. Heard their set from the 6 Music festival last week and it was ruddy brilliant – both the records I have are amazing and the rest of their back catalogue is hopefully on its way soon!

Although it’s been said a million times above, I’ll say it again – winters over non-winter 4WD.

The tyres are the only bits touching the road so no matter what the car has in terms of fancy electronics or mechanicals, if the tyre is slipping, it’s slipping. Winter tyres make an absolutely huge difference on icy and snowy roads and you’d feel the benefits more than 4WD. And as others have said, you can put summers on the rest of the time and not be lugging round a huge 4WD system you don’t need.

Pretzels are meant to be good apparently – dry, ‘inert’, and salty.

Second plain rice as an option as well.

In my opinion, not as good as the Vectra before it. They certainly aren’t bad, but it just doesn’t feel like you have much connection to the car – not in that way of wanting to hoon it round in a diesel family car, but just in that you wonder sometimes if the steering is actually reacting to you turning the wheel. But stil drive able and the cabin is fairly decent, and seems comfortable (not driven our pool car on anything but short journeys).

My thing with it is that cars like the Insignia, Mondeo, etc should really be dull to drive because they just do everything well – nothing exciting or unexpected happens, but it just gets you from point a, to point b a long way away, in comfort, with no drama, and carrying whatever you need. In a Mondeo I just switch off (in a good way!) as it does that perfectly. With the Insignia, there is always something that causes me to make a comment at some point in a journey.

But yeah, certainly not a bad car so would be worth a test drive I reckon. I’d be looking at the Mondeo as well though – there is a reason it is so popular.

I use VR28 (for bright) and Persimmon (for flat) in my Crowbars – both cover their respective best light conditions well, but are also light/dark enough to not have to worry if it suddenly clears up/clouds up.

You don’t need to thrash a diesel to keep the DPF clean, and cruising along at relatively low revs (I.e. 70 in 6th) won’t be a problem. The ECU just needs steady driving at a reasonable load so it can manage the regeneration temperature. If the temp starts spiking due to big accels/decels then it will cancel the Regen (which is why town driving only will generally clog up a DPF). Running at higher engine speeds/loads (thrashing it…) will just give slightly more passive Regen – it will still need a steady period at low to medium load in order to do a full Regen.

Until a couple of months ago would have said LoveFilm, but Netflix has really upped its game recently and is getting some good films very quickly from the Cinema and also updating its backcatalogue – it’s no longer just 80’s action flicks….

Where it excels though is in TV series ‘box sets’ if that is your thing – easily the best selection of the lot especially if you like the big US series and more independent stuff.

As ChrisDiesel has mentioned, I’m pretty sure all the VAG diesels will have DPFs. There is simply no way of passing current legislation without one.

An engine with SCR (Urea, AdBlue, etc) will lower the amount of DPF filling as the soot SHOULD be less, but it will still need one.

The Ford/PSA engines are actually very good – you hear a lot of bad things as there are just so many of them. I know plenty of people who have had them with absolutely no issues however – just the case of you only hear the bad stuff and not when they work well!

B&W 601s wuth NAD electronics – 11 years going strong and still absolutely love the sound.

Interestingly, in the last few years I have made a couple of mates who are both sound engineers and have the exact same setup – which is reassuring that it must be a pretty good matchup!

If your looking at that BMW then I believe it has the ZF 8HP ‘box which is about as good as you are going to get – and it is very very good. Smooth, quick changes, not slushy, and (as long as they’ve calibrated th shifts correctly) it is pretty good at not changing ratios at really annoying moments.

As for actually driving one, as others have said, you will get used to it very quickly. Bit weird with your left foot to start with but make sure it’s firmly pressed on t foot rest or tucked under your right leg and you’ll soon forget about it.

Yes, go into Settings>Music and uncheck the “show all music” option. That will leave only the tracks you have downloaded available to view in the Music app. When you want to download another track, just flick that switch back on.

If you turn off iTunes cloud then it usually deletes everything…

Just had two of my photos delivered today on canvas prints from Whitewall and the quality is superb. I’ve used various companies before and Whitewall is blowing them all out of the water for both canvas and normal prints. As Shackleton says above, a bit more expensive but well worth it.

Diesel is not lower emissions – its lower CO2

Not true unfortunately – a diesel engine will produce less CO and HC (as well as CO2) than a petrol engine but, as mol says, will produce more NOx and PM.

However the emissions limits now are so tight and so close together that it is really only CO2 that you can easily call between the two. Moving to Euro 6 cars are going to be pretty damn clean in the grand scheme of things.

Interestingly for this thread, from Euro 6 gasoline engines will also need to pass a Particulate Mass test (i.e. soot) the same as diesels – can’t see this bringing the need for DPFs unless the calibration engineers are crap, but the particulates released from diesels and gasoline engines will be, at maximum, the same from Euro 6 onwards (0.005 g/km).

Only [passenger] vehicles I know running it in Europe are Mercedes as they developed the technology with the German ministry*..?

Yeah – Mercedes are the only company I know definitely using SCR in european passenger cars currently, but there may be others. I believe for pas cars it will be a service fill item (similar to Eolys described above). Once Euro 6 legislation comes in, you’ll see a lot more SCR in larger engined diesels whilst smaller ones (<2 litres) you can still get away with just EGR and a decent calibration and hit the NOx target.

ummm could the DPF give you issues if you accidentally ran the car on Petrol for a 15 miles till it cut out? i seem to have a power/limp mode problem since the fuel drain and new fuel filter.
interwebby tells me all sort of (horror) stories, including massive soot issues out the engine clogging up most things cos of higher burn temps of petrol…

I’d be more worried about the seals in the high pressure fuel pump!

Eolys is used in the Peugeot/Citroen versions of the 1.6 as well in case anyone was interested. I have to admit I didn’t realise that it caused the ash problem – normal DPFs will all have some ash content in them from regen but it is pretty tiny and hence no problem, had no idea the Eolys caused it to be a lot higher.

AdBlue is used for the reduction of NOx – although a side effect is that you can run a LOT less EGR if you have an SCR (Selective Catalytic Reduction – using AdBlue) which brings your soot down and so much slower and lower volume DPF filling.

That’s how they are designed to work. If they prevented all the bad stuff coming out, they’d be called a catalytic converter.

DPFs are sort of semi-catalysts – when they are in regeneration there is a catalyst reaction and the ‘exhaust’ is not just what went in (soot), but it is oxidised and comes out as mainly CO2 – still not great, but better (for a given value of better…) than the black soot you would have got without a DPF

iPod is still probably your best bet – especially if she was after something like an iPod touch as there really isn’t anything to touch it (pun sort of intended).

If she wanted just a straight music player, then Sony are launching a couple of new ones that do look very good and would certainly be the equal of an iPod classic/nano – might be worth a look.

But for something that can also do web, movies, games, etc then iPod Touch all the way.

Probably the best down jacket for the money. I was all set to buy one last winter when work offered to buy a near £300 RAB down jacket instead – oh go on then!

Cushed pretzels. Amazing.

Flour, egg, pretzels, oven, done.

I love the fact that for huge nuts/bolts (as I cm across) you’d expect there to be some fancy tool to tighten and loosen them….but no, it’s just a bloody great spanner exactly as if someone took a normal 10mm spanner and pressed the ‘enlarge 10x’ button.

Agree – love mine, perfect jacket for riding in. It’s not too insulated that you can’t wear it if you are going some or it gets a bit warmer, wind proof enough to take the edge off but still be breathable, and rainproof enough to shrug off the odd shower whilst again still being mega breathable. Tough as old boots, great cut, looks good. Sorted.

Definitely looks to be an impressive bit of kit. The ‘pro’ level 12-40 2.8 they’ve bought out (and the 40-150 apparently coming) look ace as well. Although it’s been great for a while, I think this is m4/3 starting to come of age – wouldn’t be surprised if you start to see a lot more professional photographers starting to use these.

Tea Pigs black tea is brilliant. I was a little sceptical at first, but having tried it, it really does taste different from ‘normal’ tea bags. I couldn’t drink it all the time, but for when you want to sit down with a cup of tea and a book or something (i.e. not having tea whilst working etc) then it is brilliant. Their Chai is great as well.

Been drinking quite a lot of White Tea recently (Clipper brand) as you can have it black to cut down on dairy intake and because it is a slightly milder flavour it doesn’t have that dry, bitter taste that black tea does if you have it black.

Just happen to have downloaded one today in fact!

Called Dia. Open source one. Seems to work great.

Good stuff – it’s a fantastic flash, you will enjoy it a lot!

The new one is on my radar for next car on company lease once my current one runs out. Drove the 4WD diesel (non vRS) back in March in Switzerland and it was properly bloody brilliant. Properly impressed with it. The only thing you can mark against Skoda these days is past history. If people can’t look past the badge then they are missing out on some cracking value for money (and just generally excellent) cars.

Andy, just to check – if you want the optical master function, you will need the 568 ex ii rather than the 568 ex. It has only just been released, but is available on eBay.

I recently bought a 568ex ii and couldn’t be happier. It is the first of the YN flashes to be a master so would be the one you would want (although, as Cougar says, I believe the internal flash of the 650D can do master as well – worth checking out). It’s a great flash though,withi everything you would need.

The YN 622c radio transmitters are meant to be ace as well. You can get 4 of them for £50 (master and 3 remote flashes) so might be worth a look if you do a lot of off camera work. Means both your flashes can be off camera ra than just the one.

speed12 – I need to sell the 40D first – was on here and now on avforums. Might end up having to ebay it

It’s not technically ‘for sale’ as yet – so it won’t be going anywhere any time soon. Was still toying with keeping it (upgraded to a 6D which is why I’m getting rid of it..possibly..) but probably won’t. If you manage to sell your 40D in the nearish future then give me a shout (think my email is in my profile…if not I’ll bung it there..) and I’ll probably still have it!

{Edit #3…thought you could PM….apparently you can’t…}

Shameless derail…(but vaguely on topic…)

AlexSimon, I actually have a less than year old (bought in November) 60D with a Sigma 17-70 2.8-4, flash, plus bag and other bits for sale for not much more than that….let me know if interested!

Back on topic..

Hadn’t realised the 70D was going to be quite as much as that. It is quite a lot of spec for the money – essentially you are getting the guts of a 7D, the body of a 60D/700D, and the fancy new live view AF. If video is your thing then it is arguably the best body on the market for it.

Having said that, as others have said, the majority of video would actually use manual or set focus and good editing, rather than AF, but I suppose it depends what you are trying to record. The 70D would offer everything any other body would in terms of video, but with the addition of the fancy AF if you needed it. Really does depend on what you are after. Mirrorless isn’t QUITE there yet IMO (apart from said GH3 which is meant to be rather good for video).

If your shooting video then the 70Ds new sensor has a HUGE advantage over anything else on the market – phase detect autofocus over the entire (almost) sensor surface. This means you can pick ANY focus point and get proper, quick, non-hunting AF rather than slow contrast detect or being stuck with AF points. In this respect it even beats the Sony SLTs which were previously the best way to get phase detect in video/live view.

I certainly wouldn’t go the EOS-M route yet. Current one is just too slow and half hearted. I’d be very surprised if Canon didn’t put e 70D sensor in the next EOS-M model as it is almost as if it was designed for it (and in some ways probably was). If you wanted to go mirror less, then the Pamasonic GH3 was pretty much designed for video and has had great reviews in that regards. Brilliant selection of lenses as well.

But 70D does certainly seem like an impressive bit of kit!

I used to do it while at Uni and it was fantastic fun. Mainly did smaller club meets at Thruxton (closest circuit), but have also done BTCC and Brit GT a few times. Even had the pleasure of being on post at Brands with the chap who rugby tackled that nutter at the British GP years ago!

If it appeals, and from your post clearly it does, then as others have said, get in touch with your local(ish) marshalling club and sign up and start doing it. You certainly won’t be at the British GP in your first year, you have to do a certain number of meetings and be good at it to do it. I think most are BRDC as well (which isn’t an issue really – you can still join the BRDC). The big events are good fun as the cars etc are impressive, but the most fun ones are the club events – much friendlier atmosphere and racing is generally better.

Definitely give it a shot!

As Camo says – it’s not hard, but does involve a very light bit of scrambling which might not be suitable for a 3yr old. The Ranger path is great though – the best ‘normal’ route up Snowdon IMO so I’d go for that.

I like it……

(although it is a bit slower. They are going after the 500px idea I think, which is similar in style but much much better. However, I still think the new Flickr is alright. Time may tell though…)

License to Ceilidh are worth a look. Disclaimer that a mate is their sometimes pianist so I’m a bit biased, but try are properly good and based in te South-East so in the right area-ish.

Did the ‘extreme’ route on Tuesday and its really good fun – nothing crazily difficult, but enough to keep you on your toes and certainly something different if you already enjoy scrambling etc. views are superb from te top. I wouldn’t even consider the classic – as hp says, it starts well (first bit is the same as the extreme) but then just goes on to being a scramble up an incline but tied in (something you would be able to do without the safety line). The extreme goes on to do a bit on a vertical wall with overhang in some places, a single wire ‘Burma bridge’, a much steeper scramble/climb up and a big cargo net to finish it. Took 2 of us just under 2 hours and worth every penny I reckon – was a top morning!

Yeah, there are several demonstrators out there at the moment and they seem to do a very good job – definitely something that will become more widespread in the coming years.

Not personally used any of the cotton shell jackets as mentioned above, but would second the idea of looking at Fjallraven – as mentioned above, they are a bona-fide outdoor company so you know it’s designed for performance rather than style, although they seem to look good as well. Outdoorsmagic have been giving them quite a bit of airtime recently so probably worth a look.

Just been in Switzerland the past week with work and although I didn’t ski personally (sadly), a colleague did and said the snow was excellent. We had a huge snow dump the day we left (about a foot of it) so it’s still coming down decently up there.