Aquarium is good, and the restaurant does excellent octopus)

Love this thread. Mark should work on sponsorship deals with all these brands.

Official Cordless Tool System of STW: Makita

Official Rechargeable Battery of STW: Ikea Ladda (Eneloop)

Official Smart TRV of STW: Tado

Official Kitchen of STW: DIY Kitchens? Or Ikea?

Please recommend me: Wirestrippers and a Battery tester. Also watching recommendations for a beard trimmer. Not been overly impressed with the Wahl stainless steel or the Panasonic with the built in sucker before that.

oldnpastit Full Member
I don’t know about wire strippers. I have one from Screwfix but it’s rubbish.

I might be middle aged, but at least I won’t be oldandpastit with these recommendations 😉 Fatmax looks good for AC electrical work, thank you. Wondering if they might be a bit unwieldy for working at a light fixture or switch?

Battery tester – I do of course have a lot of Ikea Eneloop AAs (the official battery of STW) for my Tado TRVs (the official smart TRV of STW) and some other stuff. But I also have a box of random alkaline batteries and I can’t ever see that not being the case.

Can’t quite figure out what you want to do but the preview app that comes preinstalled is surprisingly powerful. Otherwise Canva (free version) can do most things like that. Am sure there are loads more.

The older they get the more fun games like this are surely (this year was the first year I was able to hit the daughter in the face with a snowball (accident!) and not have the snowball fight end in tears and recriminations.

Some ideas for the eggs:

in the cat poo flowerbed.
behind the neighbours Rottweiler
buried really deep
Chucked on the roof
In a mini barbwire nest
In the cistern
Next to a lawnmower trap (try and get it before the lawnmower falls on your head!)

Commiserations op, that sounds nasty. Most neighbourly stuff like crying kids, shitting cats, yapping dogs, banging music etc I can cope with but this would really do my head in. And I don’t mind the occasional whiff of a cigarette (better than the bloody mushroom clouds of fake strawberry crap from the vape of a grown man who has lost all self respect).

Er. Anyway, yes just ask nicely every so often if they could move away from the door. Expect when it is cold/raining they probably won’t but otherwise surely it’s not the first time someone has asked them to go a bit further away.

Or get an outdoor extractor. Or put in an extremely loud air conditioning unit right next to them. Or get a pregnant lady to parade her bump around the garden and then ask nicely. Or get a shitting cat.

As a bloke in a Zafira* with a blow up tent I can only applaud.

* currently worth 9 Porsches

Both those speakers are compatible with both apps, but to use with S1 you need to downgrade them using the S2 app (doesn’t sound like you want to do this, but does explain why S1 prompts you to download S2). Source: https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/sonos-s2-compatibility

I would delete both the S1 and S2 apps. Factory reset then unplug both speakers.
Install the Sonos S2 app.
Follow the instructions to add the play:1.
Assuming it still doesn’t work, get onto their support. I think they have phone and live chat.

Ban These Underhand Stealth Ads

#hugops

Apple TV is good though mine is in the garage for Zwift now. Did think I would get one for the living room but the Samsung OS isn’t that  bad, and has Airplay built in.

One thing to note: if you need subtitles on iPlayer, don’t get the Apple https://www.reddit.com/r/appletv/comments/hl71hk/bbc_iplayer_subtitles

Appreciate the answers! Only in roadbikeland would I have XL biceps but I’ll take it 💪

Has anyone owned a 26” Cotic Soul and it HASNT been their favourite 26” hard tail?

Bloody loved that bike.

Would you prefer less relevant advertising?

Yes, I would prefer tech giants used the incredible data, compute and brain power at their disposal for something more useful than ad-tech.

Thing that annoys me is companies like google striking deals with companies like b&q and card processors to link up purchasing data with location, browsing, and other such stuff to make ads slightly more targeted and relevant sometimes.

That’s my data. Pay me!

It’s called News though. It’s not called Important. Most days nothing Important happens, at least with enough of a difference from the day before to keep people watching/reading/listening.

I would pay a subscription to Important, as long as they promised not to bother me unless it was actually really Important.

I manage a big team and I find it far easier to do that from home than in the office.

It’s amazing what you can afford when you don’t need an office that fits everyone in:

We have a small managed office for the folk that live nearby and want to get out of their houses/flats.

We provide a stipend for folk that want to use a managed office/wework and don’t live near HQ.

Decent allowance for home working kit.

Decent hardware and software for remote collaboration and constant reviewing of it.

Expenses paid when teams want to arrange to meet up for work or fun.

Regular pretty much mandatory away days for whole company F2F time. All expenses paid, and done in an extremely inclusive way.

I think they’re in the roof box somewhere near the shed.

EDIT: PSA aero ones for £50 (if you already have the feet)

I’ve definitely noticed my parents go through this. They raised us in the 80s & early 90s through Thatcherism, the Cold War, the fear of nuclear fallout, 2 iraq wars, and negative equity. They thought nothing of taking us through south east asia on a shoestring budget with no idea how we’d get home and seemingly no care for our safety (it would be called terrible parenting today, but it was amazing). They’d let my brother and I, when we were under 10, roam the west end of London by ourselves for several hours, with no means of contacting us and no idea where we were. They were serene and chill even though we had little money and they worked all hours of the day through worrying times.

Now, as they near their 80s they read the daily broadsheet, watch the news twice a day and have radio 4 on all day. They worry about the end of the world, and our safety every day, even though we’re not doing anything anywhere near as risky as they did, and have a pretty comfortable life. I guess the end of the world is a lot closer for them, but I wish they wouldn’t dwell on it so much and enjoy their health and relatively comfortable life.

Meanwhile I mostly worry about stuff like the quality of education and what my daughter will grow up to be – same as most other parents. For my own sanity I make sure I get some fresh air and exercise every day and maybe scan the BBC news for a minute a day, and take social media with a large pinch of salt.

Chris King headset on my ancient Cotic soul still looks brand new.

@mamadirt’s Dialled Holeshot frame continues to be passed down to rad women and girl bikers ☺️

Difference is that tickets aren’t just limited in supply. They have a sell by date and an additional once in a lifetime quality – Taylor Swift will have new songs and new routines for her next tour so if you want to see the 2024 version of Taylor Swift, pay the $$$ now or miss out forever.

This is more like wellies at Glastonbury in 1997. I decided I didn’t want to spend out on wellies beforehand and have the hassle of storing them and carrying them and owning them forever, but after several hours of (unforecasted!) torrential rain at the site, I was willing to pay triple 🤷

As with the enterprising glastonbury welly seller, someone had to take the risk and upfront expense of buying up all the Vitus/Nukeproof spares and take the time to list/ship/deal with returns. But if you need a Nukeproof chainstay protector in a few years time, you’re going to be ecstatic that Four seasons cycles Abingdon had the forethought to do so.

it’s only going to be a few years before anyone can create videos of famous people doing or saying anything they want that will be indistinguishable from reality.

that would be quite cool, I’d watch those. Probably be really good on a big screen. They could call them “watchies” or “movles”

I guess I was just a little surprised at the lack of free software for certain use cases. There is a learning curve when moving to a Mac which is to be expected after 30+ years of using Windows.

Googled around – looks like there is a port of Putty for MacOS, and Cyberduck looks to be similar as well.

Free software I use on Mac:

• VSCode
• iTerm
• Alfred (though pay for it now)
• Numi (amazing notepad/calculator thingy that I should probably pay for)
• Rectangle (Window management, possibly my one hangover from Windows days)

I’d also say a lot of the bundled software is great, especially if you are also an iOS user. Embrace the apple-y darkness!

Congrats on your new job!

I love remote working but the one thing I oddly missed was the commute time to clear my head/decompress. So I make sure I go for a walk before starting and ideally do something afterwards like 30mins on zwift afterwards (in reality I manage this a couple of times a week).

Unlike others I don’t set strict hours. One of the joys of remote working for me is having flexible hours ymmv.

Eat when you want. You are free from the tyranny of 3 meals per day! I have breakfast/lunch when I get hungry, usually around 11:30.

A main office is good if you have the space. Especially if you have kids. Spend time and money making it somewhere you want to spend a lot of time.

But move about if you feel like you are losing focus. Or get out of the house. Some companies will let you expense co-working spaces, or just sit in your favourite cafe every so often.

I try and think of it as remote working, rather than working from home. Subtle but different mindset.

If it’s just the two of you and you are both remote workers, make the most of it, we’d be off travelling all over the place!

Try not to turn into a hermit. Get to the offsites and socials. Remote is great for getting things done but can become transactional if you don’t put effort into relationships. Have more 1:1 meetings than you are comfortable with.

Hopefully your company has some ways of doing this – they may feel forced but any face time with colleagues is valuable.

Is your whole company full remote or is it a hybrid situation?

<quote> I think people need to get some perspective on things; if you can afford such, it means you are lucky, not because you’ve worked harder than others, or ‘deserve’ it more. Just lucky. Enjoy that privilege, but be mindful that it is just that.</quote>

I mean, we’re on a mountain bike forum talking about the choice to either work less or earn more so I thought that was already all obvious that this was all first world problems 🤷

@brownperson I’m sure you mean well. Read my post again properly, I never said I worked harder than anyone or deserve anything due to my job (that would be weird!).

I am lucky (there you go!) to have the career I have and don’t intend to dress it up in pretending that I worked hard for it (compared to most of the global or even uk working population). From reading your posts, your background doesn’t sound much different to mine in terms of perspective, upbringing, part of the world we’re from etc. my background means that makes it even more special to me that I can provide for my family. You aren’t going to be able to make me feel guilty about that, and hopefully most people on here have similar perspective even if they aren’t explicit about it in every post.

There’s a lot going on in this thread 😂

That family that came into £50k and spent some of it going to Disneyland. That seems…ok? As someone with a young family, I’d probably stick say 50% into a high interest savings account or pension, bump up my rainy day fund, 30% on home improvements and then ideally I’d have 10% to spend on something fun for the family.

In fact, having a family does change the way you think about money once you start to earn more than you need to survive, and that understanding seems missing from some of the more frugal mindsets above.

In my mind, as much as I need to think about the future and plan ahead, having a daughter that is rapidly growing up means we have a window of 5-7 years where she is robust and interesting enough to take abroad, and also young enough to want to hang out with us and have fun (If you have >1 kid I assume that window of opportunity is even smaller). For us, we’re choosing to spend more on fun holidays now, which perhaps could go into retirement, or fixing up my car or buying new windows for the house. And by heck my frugal past self who could go back packing for £5 a day would be baffled by some of the holidays we have. We don’t travel in summer hols because it’s too expensive and hot, but try pricing up a cheap skiing holiday in feb half term, and a cheap but nice trip somewhere European and warm in October half term and have change from £5k.

And yes, that is a luxury and a privilege but that is kind of supposed to be the point in having a career. I could choose to save it all but I cant spend it when I’m dead. I could cut down on my hours but I’d still be working, just less able to travel. I could travel less but showing my daughter the world is one of the most important of the least important things we do.

In this order:
1. A keyboard and trackpad that are nice to use.
2. Decent build quality without being too heavy.
3. Portable, but with the largest screen you can get for the size.
4. Great battery life
5. Decent performance for whatever it is you need it to do.

If you can’t get the above then the laptop won’t move far from your desk and you might as well get a desktop.

A 2023 i5 is probably faster and more efficient than a 2018 i7, sure. What will you use the laptop for?

Social media isn’t real.
Be kinder to yourself.
Ignore the advice in this thread, but do make sure you really

Gieves & Hawkes mtm suit, back when I needed to wear a nice suit sometimes. No idea if it still fits.
Fender strat case.
All my bike gear is in the garage.

My friend Ken is part of the family business that has run Bart Endean stonemasons for over 100 years. I know they treat each of their customers with huge respect, and they are all dedicated crafts people.

Library > Songs should have them all in with an option to shuffle?

@cloudie yes, you don’t need to do anything other than run the updates, Big Sue will be no more 😅

You’re pretty far behind on updates!

You should update to MacOS Sonoma which is 14.x

And assuming that last line is Safari I think you should be on version 17.x (but you need to update your OS)

These super luxury holidays and trips all seem a bit try hard to me?

It’s all a sliding scale though isn’t it? If I could, I’d easily spend £10k-£15k a year on holidays without a hint of actual luxury (acknowledging the huge privilege of being able to go skiing in February half term even if it was a basic self catering apartment). We probably do spend somewhere near the bottom end of that range across the year and I’d love to spend a little bit more for just a tiny bit nicer accommodation).

That might seem like an insane amount of money (especially to someone earning £20k PA) but it’s probably not far off what many on this thread spend if they stopped to add it all up.

I just think it’s a bit simplistic to say the OP is wrong to stop and consider his choices sometimes. The flip side of what a lot of people are saying above is that we only get one life, and we’re not guaranteed a long retirement. I’d rather earn a decent amount and spunk it on C&H family holidays while my family wants to travel together and we are all healthy.

To see it for yourself rather than have Marques Brownlee talk you through the website:

https://openai.com/sora

Unbelievable how quickly this is moving, but surely the compute & storage costs must be stratospheric for video?

Find this stuff fascinating. Having just got back from a shoestring skiing holiday that was still mind bogglingly expensive I am also very torn over this stuff. I am fortunate to like my job and get paid pretty well for it (especially for someone with no qualifications at all) but I know that I could move and get paid more.

I’d probably have to travel more or do more hours but neither would be the end of the world as long as I could mostly wfh. In return potentially I’d be able to afford better holidays, a nicer car and hopefully be a bit more relaxed about money. Possibly it would mean retiring at a younger age as well. And as much as I like my job…I’d still rather not be doing it for another x years.

Lastly, and this is just a theory of mine – but I’m not totally sure if the OP and his friend switched jobs there would be much change in either of their attitude towards their work. For many people (ok mostly men) our identity is so wrapped in our work, ability and status, it can be hard to work out the underlying issue when something in that mix between work, life and money starts to cause issues. Kramer you just seem to have a healthier outlook than your mate, and not all of that is going to be related to work.

Safari on iPhone works fine. Check your settings (I think they are dotted about in the menus a bit) to see what videos and ads you can turn off.

Sometimes it goes a bit funny with cookie popups and login issues, but Mark and his very small team of excellent developers are pretty responsive to reports (even the unnecessarily rude ones).

I’ve had a lot of value out of the forum over the years

Then it’s definitely worth the price!

Yes it’s annoying that for all the car chat on here no one discusses this most important topic with any accuracy.

The Jogger can’t take a bike upright I don’t think (also someone on here hates his one). I’ve been wondering about the ID Buzz or the Skoda Enyaq maybe? Our Zafira (non Tourer version) takes upright 29ers but it’s not exactly refined and they stopped making them 10 years ago.

Am baffled by this VW lane assist issue that folk have a problem with. Have rented a couple of VWs with it and it seems easy to turn off, and indicating when you change lanes seemed to override it as you’d expect. Keep meaning to find the thread on it to try and figure out what I’m missing.

Not sure if your Mac supports anything higher than Catalina?

Deleting apps like GarageBand if you don’t use them is a good idea. GarageBand includes loads of samples too.

DiskInventoryX is great for seeing where space is being taken up. But if you aren’t confident in what you can delete it’s probably not much help. I tend to Google any massive files it finds and see if it’s safe to delete them and usually it hasn’t caused any problems.

New MacBook Air due in a month or two so would hold off from doing anything impulsive. I really like my M2 MacBook Air but your 2012 is a design classic and if it still does what it needs for you then why get rid?

the-muffin-man Full Member
You’ve not covered making progress and…poweerrrrrrrr

This is a safe space, so if folk want to fulfil their car journalist fantasies and babble on about their skoda <i>having</i> a sporty feel that doesn’t sacrifice comfort then that’s absolutely fine. But people will feel a bit sorry for you and completely ignore what you say. You know what car journos never talk about? How many bikes you can get in sodding thing; or if it is possible for their wife to get her mountain bike in and out of the boot without cracking it on the lip. Pointless knobs.

Bruce Full Member
If you want to discuss cars you could just go to a car forum.

I’ve reported you to the mods as a shill for piston heads.

matt_outandabout Full Member
Where do “we” stand on colours of cars?

Unless you are posh you don’t get to choose the colour of your car so it not worth talking about. Also everyone knows there is only One True Colour.

trail_rat Free Member
An electric car is a no brainer.. Unless you need to tow a caravan then it’s impossible.

thepurist Full Member
Are there rules for discussing the apparently insurmountable challenges of driving at 20mph?

I’ve reported the Electric Car thread and the idiot 20mph threads for not containing enough information about the bike carrying characteristics of any vehicles mentioned therein.

ElShalimo Full Member
J-R Full Member
perchypanther Free Member
WorldClassAccident Free Member
Something about Mondeos and/or niche cars

This is a safe space, so no-one will tell you they pity you. But I think the kindest thing to do is to tell you the truth.

richardkennerley Full Member
Isn’t the answer a van?

Only if the question is: What van should I get? Otherwise you sound like someone that doesn’t know the difference between vans and cars.

ayjaydoubleyou Full Member
My personal choice in vehicle is the zenith of powered personal transportation.

munrobiker Free Member
Why do you need to fit a bike inside a car? The car should be as small as possible for your daily needs then put a bike on the roof the rare times you need it.

Kramer Free Member
Why do you need to fit a bike inside a car? The car should be as small as possible for your daily needs then put a bike on the roof the rare times you need it.
Or even better, get rid of your car and only ride in places that you can get to by train.

tjagain Full Member
You must have a watertight reason why you need a big car and listen to no arguement

Wow good points. Feel free to bang on about that stuff when people are asking for your opinion on whatever that point was.

WorldClassAccidentFree Member
Shouldn’t there always be a spurious link to a WCA “Are you Bored Enough… ” video?

No!

Drac Full Member
I have an Audi no reason being, I like team.

That’s gone badly for you that has.