If you are in the CTC then you apparently can’t go on any of the Nirvani rides as Simon was sued by some numpty who fell off and hurt himself and blamed Simon, although the rides are explicitely not organised…

ok, but I can swing my turner (or any other bike) right round so I am working on the underneath from the side or from the top – on a normal stand I couldn’t have down this – it would have fallen over. I used to have to put weighty things across the legs of the Minoura (RS5000) to kept it somewhat stable. Take the front wheel off and the Minoura would want to topple.

Wish I had bought it earlier and not wasted money on substandard stands – there is a reason the Ultimates/Feedbacks are so popular on the pro race tour.

And they are quite shiny as well…

How can you say “Lenovo has nothing to do with IBM” and “they bought out the laptop and desktop business from IBM.” in the same sentence?

Bit poor when so many people reckon their CRTs gave a better picture :-)

Especially true with the old cylindrical trinatrons – I look at the news on BBC HD and think “look I can see the news readers stubble”, but I used to think that with my old trinatron – and that was just with the women newsreaders…

Got a Feedback but the Ultimate. Ultimate has the ‘pro’ clamp.

The tripod style is a must for stability – Feedback make stands for PA speakers so they are stable.

If you have a pay a little more for the Feedback go for it – I have given away Minouras and lesser stands because they are too unstable – buy the Feedback and it will be your stand for life…

Always seatpost as frame has butting to make it light – not designed for being clamped

I wouldn’t recommend Richer Sounds…

If you are buying an LG a five year warranty is mandatory… It’s called Lucky for a reason.

also look at Europc.co.uk.

I was dissappointed with the Lenovo I looked at – keyboard not as good as I thought it would be considering the IBM link.

Several places have outlet style places for ‘refurbished’ but these are normally ok – my last two Dells have been ‘refurbs’ – if someone sends something back, not necessarily because it was broken, it can’t be sold as new and so goes to the ‘refurb’ outlet.

Argos have one on ebay. Europc is one. There is a Dixon one if you look for it. The Argos one has a Samsung R580 for someting like £450 the other day, but it is gone.

Do they have dog-eating babies in Korea?

I went Hiscox – their basic cover started at much more than the other companies and when they suggest you tot up your stuff it actually comes out near that price, so the standard policies from other would have left me very underinsured.

I think Sony’s are too colorful – when I got mine I did so as someone online had calibrated it and I could get into the system menu and change the grey levels appropriately – it is still a bit too colorful.

My old Sharp LCD had a much better balance and things therefore look more realistic.

Don’t get a screen that is too big for your viewing distance or you will see all the mpeg type nasties and upscaling artifacts.

People used to like Plasmas over LCDS for picture quality for ages when the res on those plasmas was 480p – because they had no need to upscale.

My Sharp was a 540P panel, so for PAL is just dropped 12 lines from the top and bottom of the picture and mapped it straight on, for 1080i it also mapped straight onto the panel, and for 720P and 1080P it had too much info for the panel, so downscaled.

It took me ages with the new Sony to get the picture quality as good, with the Sharp being fed through SCART and a TopField PVR and the Sony being fed through HDMI from a Virgin V+ box which has 2 300 MIP processors doing the upscaling. When fed HD through HDMI it is very difficult to tell the difference between the Sony and the Sharp.

The only problem with the Sharp was feeding a PC into it as the res was a bit low, so I sold it to my mate.

Not all TVs across a manufacturers range are universally good – my Sony was good but the 40 inch version had shocking ghosting and in my view was not fit for sale.

I always get extended warranties on Sony gear as well – whereas I would be happier getting a Panasonic with a standard warranty.

lodious has a good point, as does hora.

My wife weas broody before – this has just tipped the scales again.

I am 80% upside but have nagging doubts because of my hearing and sleep patterns – and a tennis friend from years ago urging me not to do it…

166s are very nice – I had 2 156s and the 166 drove nearly as well and is a fair bit bigger.

156 more likely as a classic as it is a Walter De Silva design and it did a good job turning things around for Alfa – if only they could have followed up with some decent reliability and dealer network…

Fiat Coupe – although I didn’t like the drive.

For classics I would say Mercedes more than BMW – their designs are better I think.

Broke mine on the 13th – week and half later had a hooked plate fitted which hopefully I will have out in March.

Arm and shoulder was very bruised up after the op and the physio only gave me some movement and rotation exercises.

The consultant has given me an expanded range of movement exercises since but I haven’t seen a physio as they would only give me the same things to do – I am not allowed anything weight bearing yet.

Although the physio wanted me to wear the sling as a ‘sign’ (as I didn’t really need it but people might not accidently bash into me) I didn’t wear it whilst walking to work and found the swinging of my arm to be beneficial. I am now well ahead of the consultants schedule for the range of movement goals.

I did find that whilst attempting to relax my arm I was actually letting it droop too much so then concentrated on keeping it in place whilst swinging it walking, so the mucles got used to holding it where it should be.

However I had problems with different parts of the rotator cuff muscles getting sore/knotted and I would lean and wriggle against the square edge of my banister to try to get rid of them, which would work but then a different muscle would ‘go’. Although he has said I can go for a sport massage I would not like to be person who has to take care in case I apply too much pressure, so I haven’t had one.

Just washed a NF down jacket with Nikwax down wash followed by Nikwax down proof – both in the washing machine and slow spin to dry, followed by hanging rather than tumble dry.

The down proof might be important as it is suppossed to restore the feathers.

Don’t think detergent is a good idea.

I can cope with the noise – the ringing is the same sound for me as when you have a bad cold – both my sister and I have narrow eustacian tubes and I think this is the cause.

I am constantly aware of it but it is not an issue for me – it is the sensitivity that is the bummer as it is this that stops me sleeping. In the past I have had periods at work where I have been living on the Relentless/RedBull but that is pretty bad for you – at the moment I drink a lot of green tea.

Lots of exercise helps, in particular XC mtbing – but that will reduce if we have a child.

I am mostly worried that I wont be able to support the wife through being so tired. We have have no family support anywhere near and I am fairly tied to working in London as I work in financial software. If I changed jobs it would be a big cut in salary (already took one to avoid the stupid hours banks want you to work) and, as it is software, I would end up doing the same hours anyway.

We had this discussion last year but her closest friend from school days has fallen pregnant recently…

The wife is 39 and I look closer to 39 than 47 (at the moment…). My Dad didn’t have me until he was 50 and I have a sister that is 7 years younger than me, but there was a 25 year gap between my parents.

My biggest worry, having ear issues like Quirrel, is that I cannot catch up sleep even if I am desperately tired. Trying to lie in doesn’t work very well as even a bird tweeting is enough to wake me.

I stuff cotton wool in my ears to compensate as ear plugs would emphasis the tinnitus too much. I wear IEM earphones at work otherwise I can follow most peoples conversations round the office.

A child screaming will be right at the frequency of my hyperaccusis and tinnitus, and I don’t want to not be able to suppport the wife when needed most. I can only see a future of me walking round the house with noise suppressing headphones on…

So I was hoping that there might be someone on here with the same problems as Quirrel and I who is further down the path and has some advice.

Transcends good for me as well…

With a USE you need to ensure that your saddle is pretty much centrally mounted on your post – if you have it slid forward or back then it won’t work very well.

Other than that they work well – have had two XCRs and also an SX on the commuter.

they are not much of a muchness…

A lot of the difference is in the processing behind the display as most of the source material you will feed the tv will not have as much resolution as the display and so will need upscaling, even 720P on a 720P panel.

I concur that Panasonics lookk better than the Samsungs – Samsungs always look processed to hell and back to me…

Look for good and natural color rendition but be aware that shops have them in display mode mostly which is normally bad.

Sony’s are too colorful (I have one so no bias).

Panasonic from John Lewis with 5 year warranty is my recommendation…

Been using a Sony PRS-505 for a while now – got it for the screen quality for which the ipad can’t compete at all.

Read technical PDFs on it but I have to trim the borders down and read in landscape to make it viable – might be interested in the bigger Kindle but the quick looks I have managed at Kindles makes it seem like the screen quality isn’t as good – but I need a closer look.

those top-end Panasonics are getting some good reviews…

argos outlet on ebay have some around that range – they HAD a samsung R580 for £449 or something but it seems to have gone.

Europc.co.uk is worth a look.

HD is worth having but my fear is that HD quality will drop again when there are several HD channels available and they have to juggle bandwidth.

This has already happened with SD with Sky reducing bitrates to see how low they could go before people complained, and then the BBC doing the same thing a while later.

BBC HD bitrates have been reduced again recently with the BBC saying that they were using new encoding algos to keep the same quality, but they originally said DAB must never be broadcast below 192kb because it was low quality, and today you rarely find any broadcasts as high as that rate.

I worked at the BBC Research Dept when they first were working on HD via the Eureka project and it was awesome, 1280 lines (or something like that) of uncompressed analogue. Todays HD is pitiful in comparison.

So just make sure you complain appropriately when you start seeing blockiness appearing on your beautiful HD pictures. It won’t do any good though with the modern BBC.

Is that boys “Special Purpose” in the first picture the same as Steve Martins “Special Purpose” in “The Jerk”

Locked down the limit screws on my XTR shifters/front mech and it works ok with a middleburn Duo, although there was a bit more fettling to set up than normal.

Freeview HD has limited bandwidth available compared to satellite system so potentially Freesat HD could be a LOT better than Freeview HD, but the BBC are keeping the quality of the Freesat HD broadcast down so when Freeview HD comes along it will look as good.

Don’t get freeview HD, let it fail as a commercial disaster and then they might stop crippling the freesat HD channels to bring them down to the reduced quality of freeview HD…

On the Virgin V+ box there is not a huge difference to the SD channels when the source material behind was original filmed in HD.

another reason for them to become uncomfortable when not in ski position will be that your foot will move forward on your footbed as well, which might also cause them to move upwards in the boot a little as well, and if it is a ‘hard’ custom footbed any ridges will be in wrong place.

I have seen recommendations that people have ‘soft’ footbeds, with the top made of cork and without all the ridges you get from standing on one of those heat machines.

I would say they should be comfortable in ski position as they will be snug, hopefully and exact fit so that you ‘could’ ski in them with your buckles undone.

When on the chairlift or in the resturant you would probably want to pop the buckles as your foot will shift a little forward out of ski position, so there would be pressure on the top of your foot. That’s how it works in my Technicas anyway.

Not sure you need super stiff boots nowadays – many coaches teach ankle flex as part of a turn and you also weight the middle of the ski more on a turn than in the old days as you want to pressure both the nose and tail of the ski into the snow to make the turn, whereas older skis only had wide noses so you had to pressure forward and skid the back round more.

Nothing wrong with Ronhill – quality stuff – I have some microfleece tops that would be 2x if they were North Face. Plus if you decide to go rambling or running you will be half kitted out already…

North Face is not necessarily representative of a good brand…

Sometimes you can find decent stuff under the running brand, like Ronhill for example, for less money.

Dremels are brilliant…

They definitely were ‘Master’ boot fitters in Heavenly – one guy was custom tailoring some boots for a woman who had recently recovered from her leg almost being completely amputated above the ankle in a car accident and the guy all my mates went to was fitting some boots to a local who was a US Navy pilot and had lost the front of one foot in a plane crash. The fitter had made a wooden foot extension and carved out a cup in it to accomodate his stump, then split and rejoined the boot with the wooden foot in it, so when the pilot put them on his stump fitted into it solidly enough for him to continue with all his normal off-piste skiing.

My footbeds are positioned ok now I have forced them forward but Hamish at Profeet wouldn’t accept that there was anything wrong. They were apparently well made otherwise – the boot fitter in Heavenly said he rarely saw work of that quality come out of Europe!

My boots also had a heel cup/ridge that interfered with my fleshy heels and crippled me on my warm-up trip to Tignes. I put ZipFits in to try to protect me but ended up having the ridge dremelled off in the states.

That is a surprising comment about Warren as he prefers boots that flex and has done surgury on clients boots if he felt they were too stiff. Not being able to flex would go against all his teachings, and all his instructors get indoctrinated into his ways as well.

I would really recommend his course – he is to skiing as ‘Jedi’ Tony is to mtbing – certainly there is a similarity between the priase on this forum for Tony and that for Warren and his instructors from people on his courses.

Profeet were not good for me :-( The heel cup on my custom footbeds was a thumbs depth short of the back of my heel which means that, when put in the liner, it is a thumbs depth too far back, meaning they were f’ing uncomfortable as all trough/humps/ridges were in the wrong place.

I questioned this at the time but was assured that it was ok so I shut up as they are ‘suppossed’ to know what they are doing. I now have a thumbs depth of padding behind the insole which makes it comfortable.

We then went to Heavenly and my mates all got booted fitted by ‘Master’ Boot fitters (i.e perfect fitting) for about 1/2 what I paid :-(

Warren Smith has dropped them as well saying they don’t seem to look after their clients anymore.

So I would go for resort fitting as you can go back to the shop for ‘tuning’ as necessary – but don’t suffer any pain for long otherwise you won’t be able to make good judgements on fit anymore as you will have bruised your feet. Google around for shop and/or fitter recommendations.

Boots should be comfortable when you are in ski position and for walking/sitting you may need to pop the front bindings for comfort.

The original reasoning for broadcasting DAB was for car radios although I never got why when the problems with multipath are much worse.

I just run with a cateye EL135 in my hand, seems good enough. Lent one to my mate who is a keen runner and he had no complaints.

I’ll will compare that to my 24 years of programming and staring at screens for about 10 hours a day or more, sometimes up to 30 if I have to pull an overnighter, fighting to keep my eyesight in the face of flickering and reflective CRT displays and flickering 50Hz flourescent lighting.

Doing exercises, not necessarily the Bates method, has worked for me – the reduction in eyestrain after doing a sesssion of exercises is clear to feel, and the improvement in my eyesight after doing these exercises for a period of time is clear for me to see.

You are entitled to your opinions, no matter how misguided they may be…