As per my first post, I should not have bothered dipping my toe into this. I tried to have a sensible debate on democracy but it’s got personal so I’m off

Oh no, wait, BigDummy has just made it for me, albeit it with his own flourish

And for the record – because I feel people missed it – I will NOT be voting for the BNP and I absolutely DO think they are racist. You don’t have an argument from me there. Go back, re-read my posts and now see if you can see my point. If not, then I have made it very badly indeed

:roll:

OK I give in. I’ve tried and clearly failed to make my point.

I had a fairly heavy Alu hardtail with cheap nasty 80mm Manitou Axel forks. I replaced them with White Brothers Rock Solid carbon forks with a 445mm axel-to-crown height (the Manitou, although only 80mm, has quite a long ATC). Not looked back, not regretted it one minute. Brilliant. Much lighter of course and the bike handles much better as a result, less maintenance etc etc. Just do it.

to elucidate on my point above – and because I’m having a more interesting time here than at work – go back 20 years to when I wanted my first mountain bike. Go into the average bike shop and there was only one type of mountain bike, albeit at different price points. Alternatively I could buy a “touring” bike or a “road bike”. All very different beasts that serve very different purposes.

Now you decide you want a mountain bike there is an endless choice of usually subtley different designs. “Do you ride downhill 37% of the time or 45% of the time? It does make a difference to which bike you choose, sir”

Same with main-party politics. It’s all in the detail at the expense of the big picture. I don’t have the inclination to dissect party manifestos so if a party can stand-out with its core values then that should be applauded regardless of if you agree with those values.

trailmonkey, I am guilty as charged of unfairly bundling the BNP and UKIP in the same ascertion. There is more difference between those two than the Tories/Labour/Liberals.

I think they’re choices we could live without.

I disagree. I think politics needs more choice, not less. At least if what a party stands for is abhorent for you it makes it considerably easier to vote for an alternative. If you’ll pardon the wholly inappopriate pun 8O I think there needs to be more black and white in politics rather than the endless shades of grey of the main parties

S Works. That is without doubt the most bizarre piece of disproportionnate cod-legal tosserism I have ever read. Astounding, unbelievable, responsibility-evading, ruining-everything-for-everyone bollocks made of hand-engraved bollock-kryptonite and set with big knob-off fat 48carat brilliant-cut conflict diamonds mined with child slave labour in the giant bollock-mines of bollockdom. I salute in awe-struck wonder the sheer majestic size and depth of the gaping void where the sense of proportion and dignity belongs in anyone who would seriously entertain sending such a ludicrous letter because they didn’t want to pay for over-staying in a carpark and were willing to lie about it.

You said it so much better than I could have managed

Why don’t these sorts of places, not just let you put money in the machine when you leave. That way you would be sure not to under pay.

I have thought the same of every car park

This thread is a bit like going for a swim in our lovely British waters (actually rather than metaphorically). I keep wanting to dip my toe in but then get cold feet…

At the last general election I read the manifestos of the Tories, Labour, Liberal and A.N Other (UKIP?), with a view to making an informed decision of who to vote for. I can’t remember the exact reasons but to be frank none of them stood out. To bring this back to bikes, they were all “All Mountain” bikes trying to be all things to all people, but the Tories argued their VPP was better than the liberals single pivot (does anyone see where this analogy is going? I don’t!). I know I’m not saying anything surprising or revolutionary; they’re all pretty much the same party in a different sweater (oh God another crap analogy).

Back to the point, whether you like what the BNP/UKIP etc stand for or absolutely detest it, at least it as a clear and different choice and that is what politics needs.

As for me? The answer is no.

Are we all intrigued by what this is for or is it just me?

Am I having a stupid day :?
Can someone explain to me how a circular spot can be tilted to create an elliptical beam yet still be in the centre of the ellipse? Or does it just need to be the centre of the short axis and not the long?

ooh good one. I used to like stuff like this when I was at school. Now I can’t remember – or never knew! – how to calculate this but to be honest I’d just cut some bits of card out and make a scale model of your beam, rotate it on the axis of the bulb until you get your required horizontal axis and then “upscale”.

The problem I see is that while simply tilting the light will give you your required 7.9m, the light will no longer be at the centre of that ellipse. Surely only an elliptical light beam will give you that.

konabunny, why can’t you just export directly from iTunes?

brick, do you want to “mix” them or just crossfade from one track to another?

is this thread still going??!!

got through to live chat eventually who confirmed that the fax was genuine but gave me the UK number instead of the US one so in terms of reassuring me, job done.

Picasa gets my vote to cover the essentials and is also a doddle to use and upload piccies to the web

:lol:

Cheers chaps. Glad I asked :D

Apparently they don’t accept attachments in emails so we can’t email the stuff (bank statements and the like)

So I can’t blame it on a flexy bike and buy a new – better – one? :D

It’s not the first time the chain has slipped but it is the first time I’ve ended up on the floor as a result

I have a work laptop and a desktop PC at home. The desktop PC I’ve had for 6 years or so and has seen additional memory added, a new power supply and a new motherboard as well as some new bits added like more USB 2 ports. Much as I love the convenience of a laptop, you can’t argue with the relative ease with which a desktop can be fixed/upgraded etc

As for Apple, I’ve pondered for many years about getting one, but mainly for the software that comes bundled with it rather than the hardware. I believe – but could be wrong – that Apples are’t very easy to get under the hood other than perhaps upgrading RAM. In recent years though operating systems and software have all caught up with Apple’s ease of use so not sure I’d bother looking at one now.

Call me an old cynic, but it matters not what you buy. One day, eventually, it will mysteriously start running slow :-)

I LIKE it, but all the other albums I LOVE.

I shall have a few more listens over the BH weekend. Fingers crossed

I’ve still not made my mind up on the best album, other than to say it isn’t KOR (yet!??)

All Doves albums are growers but it seems this one needs a little more fertilizer that the others…

If your family is very young and hence you want your alps a bit smaller than usual, then I can recommend Kitzbuhel. I went with my wife and 10 month old and some MTBing buddies. It was a walking holiday with biking. The walking is mostly unthreatening with cable car access to the top of the main peaks, but they’ll take up bikes too.

When I was there in 2007 there wasn’t much in the way of waymarked biking but we still had some great rides, albeit we were glad of a guide. The best thing about Kitzbuhel is not the biking – there are far better resorts if you want an all out biking holiday – but it is a pretty town of a good size with lots of other family-friendly stuff to see and do.

This is exactly why I bought Maverick forks. I know they have their haters but at least they are easy to service and have a good warranty – although not stripped them myself yet 8O

I LOVED Kingdom of Rust (the single) at first but now it’s lost its edge. There’s definitely no “Cedar Room” or “Snowden” on there for me tho’

no
next

My brother is English living in Sweden with a Swedish wife. From day one he spoke English to the kids and his wife spoke Swedish. Both kids are not even in their teens and speak English better than most English people.

Thanks for the stats but it doesn’t depend for me on my system. Chrome starts in a few seconds, Firefox takes 1/2 minute plus. Without exception (so far)

The irony being that I never thought about browsers until I moved away from IE. It just did what it should but I was tempted to try something else for a change. Now it is just one more thing to waste my time on. Go back to IE?? Nah, it’s super slow to start too.

I thought that at first, but I can watch the stream in IE or Firefox (or Safari for that matter) with no probs, then switch to Chrome and I’m back with the naff stream.

I’m no Chrome-addict, but the speed of Firefox when starting up (and IE) is appalling. Maybe someone has a fix for that. I tried Safari for a few minutes and gave up when I couldn’t find the home button.

youtube is fine, news vids on the bbc home page are fine, BBC iPlayer is fine. Just Freecaster causing probs so far

ha ha. Not just you fbk, although it was a nice headline

And just one last point, Michael O Leary is an arse but he is trying to create a different class of air travel. Think the difference between jumping on and off a timetabled bus versus travelling on a luxury coach. You pay your money and you take your pick. If you don’t like travelling on buses don’t fly with Ryan Air.

You think it’s alright to charge someone £40 to print out their boarding pass?

No I absolutely don’t.

Let me rephrase my point one last time. We are all happily checking in online for Ryanair when we have no hold baggage. Now we can check in online even if we do have hold baggage, thus we don’t ever need to check in at the airport and can hence turn up later. That is a good thing. I can’t see any reason other than lack of internet access for why someone can’t check in online, and since Ryanair allow you to check in 14 days(?) in advance then there really is little excuse

1. A base jump off Angel Falls(even if I did enough parachute jumps the wife would never let me)
2. Slam dunk
3. A windmill (breakdancing move for those not aware)

Still, it looks cooler than the Whyte PRST!

Back to my question though, the story this post relates to is the first “good thing” Ryanair have done for some time, so why are we moaning about it? Really, what is the big deal about being able to check in at the airport. Frankly I’d much rather turn up and fly without all the faff that goes with checking in.

Granted I fully expect them to stop carrying bikes any day now :(

I think it needs a bell