I’m flying from T4 next week – Purple Parking used to offer spaces in an official long stay car park that’s within spitting distance of the terminal, but for some reason they’re not listing this car park at the moment. However, it is being offered on the Heathrow Airport website – I’m paying just over £100 for 9 days . . . which works out cheaper per day than I pay to park in Plymouth.

As someone else has said – Cofra do a good range – we get ours from a chap called Ben at SafetyBootsUK Cofra

Choco pies – got a taste for these whilst on a cycling tour in Vietnam and still have a mad craving for them – – a bit like a wagonwheel, but sufficiently different to make seeking them out worthwhile.

A couple of months ago I suggested a Veho MX1 – available on a deal from Aldi online – can report that I’m still very happy with the sound quality, and can also now report decent battery life. Probably not worth the £200 RRP, but definitely worth the £40 price from Aldi.

Worth having a look at Lenovo.com – website offers confusingly overlapping ranges, but some good “sale” deals if you bear with it. Sign up for their Student Store to get better prices, and look out for additional discount codes for first purchase. Worth considering something with an AMD Ryzen processor.

Also worth considering – Veho MX1 at a very good price from Aldi – mine arrived yesterday and I’m well happy with the sounds it makes.

If you need very high pressure then do a search for “Air rifle pump” – if you can get one with the right fitting to suit your shock then you’re sorted – just be careful that you don’t exceed the maximum pressure for the shock.

They’ll be hoping that they can make use of the gradually rising high tides that happen over the next few days . . . although the tidal range there isn’t huge, every little bit will help. From Wednesday onwards the tides get progressively smaller, which will make the refloat progressively harder.

An alternative viewpoint . . . bigger tides over the next few days will mean that at low water more of the ship’s weight will be bearing on the grounded bow and stern sections (leaving the midships “hanging”) . . . increasing the possibility that the hull could break its back.

One of these for anything up to 5 Nm.

Sugru ?

How about a length of heavy gauge fixed rigging wire from a sailing boat ? – would have a bit of flex, but would be stiff enough to feed through a row of bikes. Hard eye at each end for padlocking to something solid. If you live near a marina worth asking the local rigging crew to see if they have any “used” lengths – the rigging wire stretches a bit in service and has to be replaced every now and again.

I take it you mean http://www.2ndhnd.com and not a thrift store blog in Missoula, Montana. 🙂

Yes . . . :-)

Another vote here for 2ndhand.com – good prices and the used chair I bought from them a year or so ago was as good as brand new.

Another vote here for Cofra – over the years have purchased several hundred pairs in a number of styles for use by Civil Engineering staff on construction projects and have had very few (<5) issues.

A simple usb wifi dongle for the PC should do the trick – around £8 for the simplest ones but more if you want one with a better range using a bigger antenna.

Well insulated perhaps implies low thermal mass – meaning that any heater will warm the air very quickly, but if there’s a draft or if you open the door then the exchange of air will take all of the heat with it.

Had a test drive in one a few years back – found that the lack of adjustment on the position of the steering wheel made it very difficult to get into a comfortable driving position – I’m clearly not shaped like your typical Italian . . . .

@kimura54321 – thanks for the information about Newitts.

As an aside – if you don’t mind me asking – if you purchased directly from Concept2 how long did you have to wait for delivery ? Their web site is currently showing something like a 14 week lead time, and the only ones I can find that claim to be available online are being priced at a significant (>£400) premium. Cheers.

Visited the museum in Osh (Kyrgystan) in 2008 – the view over the city to the mountains beyond was a little more impressive than the museum itself.

Wherever you’re road riding in Devon and Cornwall be particularly careful at the moment – lots of overly wide caravans being towed around the narrow lanes by grockles and emmets . . . there have been a few too many nasty accidents in recent weeks.

Could perhaps add to the thermal mass of the washing-machine drum burners (so that they’ll give off heat for longer after the fire has died back) by part filling with some bricks/cobbles ?

If the saddle is still attached then I’ve found that using a pneumatic chipper/hammer works well – block of wood to the underside of the saddle, then apply chipper/hammer to the wooden block – the high frequency blows will gradually ease out all-but-the-most-stuck of seatposts. Alternative to the pneumatic tool would be a hammer drill (grip a bolt into the drill chuck, rather than a drill bit).

Remember that Lenovo have a discount scheme for students (normally at least 10% off the normal advertised price), and they routinely offer a 15% off first purchase discount. . . so worth having a look at their website.

I’ve got a Krups EA8050 machine at home, and there’s a Krups EA817040 machine at work – both are easy to use and keep clean, and both have been 100% reliable. Both make a decent cup of coffee if you feed them with good beans.

If you’re feeling a bit rich . . . make that very rich.

If you’re happy with a small case (8 litres – about shoebox size) then look at the Lenovo ThinkCentre 75s-1 range on their Education site (should be able to sign up for this if you have children) – Ryzen 5 Pro 3400G, 16Gb RAM, 512Gb SSD, DVD-RW and 3 yr warranty for £536 inc VAT . . . and you might get a bit more off when you register on the Education site (they normally send a 10% off first purchase code within a day of registering) . . . which would bring the price down to <£500, or may sneak the next model up (Ryzen Pro 3700 – which absolutely flies) into budget. Case is big enough to swap in a better graphics card (for gaming) somewhere down the line.

If that’s from the Dell outlet store then worth noting that the quoted prices are usually ex VAT, and check the written specification carefully – what they show in the picture (in terms of things like DVD drives) might not be included in a particular variant. I purchased a “Certified refurbished” 3050 Micro Form Factor from the outlet store a year or so ago – couldn’t tell that it wasn’t brand new/unused, and has so far been 100% reliable.

Worth having a look on the Dell website (new or outlet) for an Optiflex 3070/5070/7070 Micro Form factor model, or on the Lenovo website for a ThinkCentre Tiny desktop model (look in the “sale” section on their website, and take advantage of 10% first time purchase and/or educational discounts).

Another vote here for 2ndhnd – got a very good deal a while ago on a used Herman Miller Aeron – definitely not cheap, but it made the recent spell of working from home a comfortable experience, and it should last me a lifetime. Service from 2ndhnd was good – chair was packed well, delivered promptly and you’d struggle to spot that it was “used”.

For construction site hard hats widely used guidelines are 5 years from manufacture and/or 3 years from date of issue (assuming good storage and no damage) – but these are only guidelines – there’s nothing in HSE regulations.

Slight hyjack, we have £800 budget for a PC tower for gaming PC for 13 year old son, any recommendations?

Worth having a look at Lenovo’s “Education” store – 10% off the normal prices, and if you sign up for their newsletter you’ll get sent a 10% discount voucher almost immediately – put the two together and there are some decent deals to be had . . . and order via QuidCo to maybe get some cashback too.

Not as dramatic as a DIY ventilator, but spotted yesterday that AP Diving (who make valves and suchlike for SCUBA diving) have rushed out an adapter valve that enables ordinary SCUBA diving air cylinders that have been oxygen-cleaned to be converted for use as an oxygen cylinder . . . apparently because there could be a shortage of gas cylinders to run the ventilators. Available here.

Worth having a look on the Dell outlet site for an XPS8930 desktop – can get a decent spec machine well within budget, especially if you can get the 10% first purchase or 15% student discount.

Worth having a look at http://www.2ndhnd.com

Dell Outlet – in my experience their “certified refurbished” models are indistinguishable from new. Always look for extra discount codes too. Note that the “Home” outlet prices include VAT by default, the “Business” outlet prices exclude VAT by default.

Something like this do the job ?

Picked up one of these on a recent trip to Vietnam – not liquid tight, but otherwise great. Reckon you should be able to find similar on-line.

The route in Bolivia along RN3 from Cristo de la Cumbre to Coroico via the infamous Yungas “Road of Death” is quite an amusing ride – drops around 3000m in a distance of about 70km. First part is on decent tarmac, but the last 2/3rd or so is rough track with hairpin bends and some stupendously big drops on the left-hand side. :-)

Have been pleasantly surprised by the robustness and easy cleaning of some Prestige Stone Quartz frying pans and ovenware purchased a few years ago – good heat distribution on an induction hob, and ovenware cooks very evenly. However, for saucepans my first choice (if you can find them) would be Demeyer 18/10 stainless Triplinduc – made in Belgium and after about a decade of very regular use are literally as good as new.