Placebo – now you are talking tosh.

So my bad eyesight is just a state of mind ? It would have to be for a placebo to make any improvement.

All I said was it felt the same as stretching muscles – I didn’t say it that it was.

If you, T666DOM, read my post again you will see that initially I have my head tilted to focus on the object but gradually I raise my head until I can focus on the object with my head orientated normally. I can’t be getting a pinhole efect then, can I?

Bates techniques or derivatives of cannot be tosh if people have used those techniques and improved their eyesight, or otherwise how did they do it? His reasoning may be wrong, but the exercises are beneficial.

How is your workspace for flourescent lights? They are evil for eye strain unless 100Hz, so try filling in your light if needed with a desk lamp.

Don’t work with CRTs or glossy LCDs if possible.

Don’t sit too close to the screen.

The Bates stuff is great – I’ve used it with some modifications with good results – I prefer to work my eyes rather than relax.

So I move the eyes around left-right and up-down as he says, but I also do up-down at the leftmost and rightmost extremes – which is working them. It feels like stretching muscles out.

I sometimes will look at something that has detail at a distance and lower my chin so I am peering out from my eyebrows, which gets the best focus (must compress something). After a while of looking at the object I will then lift my head slightly until I lose focus, at which point i will lower my head again until object is back in focus and stare at it some more. I then repeat until eventually my head is normally positioned and the object is still in focus.

24 years of programming computers and having big problems with flickering displays and particularly flourescent lights and only have a light prescription (0.5) for driving.

La Tania is nice – and you can catch the bus easily to get around to Courcheval if you don’t want to ski there.

For cheap look at some of the coach companies, like

http://www.skiweekends.com

or

http://www.snowcoach.co.uk

Went to La Tania witht the former some years ago, and to Valmeinier with snowcoach a few years ago.

Valmeiner was a hotel but the atmosphere is like a big chalet – you all eat at the same time, etc. We got lucky at the Chef was a Michelin chef wanting a season at a ski resort!

The hotel is near the main lift and you can link round to the other resorts easily – apparently that area was scheduled to be the original 3 Vallies but it didn’t happen for some reason.

The hotel has rental facilities and staff that guide, but don’t coach, so it is easy to find a group of people to ski with.

I also heard good reports about their other hotels from snowcoach regulars at the hotel.

They are coach trips to take 15 hours or so, but the seats are big and have a big recline so if you take a book or media player and a sleeping bag it is cushtie if you are the type that can drop off to sleep easily. No fussing around keeping track on the kids either.

skiweekends use the chunnel and have a little quicker journey time, snowcoach do a bit of a circular route picking people up and then you take the ferry, so more hassle.

The coach trips get you 8 days skiing whereas someone flying might get only 6.

IMHO brides les baines is a little too far down the slope for comfort, but if skiweekends go to La Tania again I would consider it – I would rather sit reading a book or watching a movie than mess around with all that dead transfer time when flying.

http://www.skimeribel.co.uk have coaches with seats that turn into bunk beds, but they look a litle more expensive than the others. Meribel is a good looking resort though, although Chourcheval is nicer for beginners with those big motorway greens back to 2000.

And that girl in the wheelchair managed to stand up at the Bar in the Rovers…

It’s a bug in the code behind the site – the code has probably followed an execution path that has led to some object it relies on not having being allocated, or looked up from some repository based on your logon credentials, earlier.

Email a screenshot to the admin address on the page…

Can you not plot a route on the Garmin?

can get a turner for near that in the sales…

I ordered roses for my wife last Feb from Next and they were really poor – an embarasment.

Next gave me some vouchers!

Never gonna use them again.

Feedback were called Ultimate before, and they made PA speaker stands, which are also tripod style and can obviously take a lot of weight.

It could be that you could could also fashion a stand out of one of these for less as the speaker stands seem to go for a lot less than the bike stands.

I gave my rs5000 away – I got the Feedback Ultimate as it has the better clamp – they were called Ultimate – paid £220ish I think.

It is very stable – th tripod base is very tolerant of the ground it is on – and I believe a lot of pro mechanics use them on the race circuit.

It may be that other tripod styles, like the Topeak, are good as well for less money. But mine would have been cheaper if I had just followed my instinct and bought it in the first place instead of the minoura (which I got for £80 in a Merlin sale) and another stand b4 that.

a bit expensive but I can’t see me ever changing it.

Otherwise the rs500 could be made stable with a couple of sandbags on the legs – for a cheaper but less flexible solution.

Technics SP10 in a decent plinth is still a good bet – with a good arm on it will beat most things.

Boiling the rubber drive belts works better to clean it I think…

Those cork mats can be a big improvement over the felt mats on a glass platter – look a bit geeky though

it’s ok with just a cold, but don’t exercise if you have a bad throat…

Why do HiFi shops always recommend Cyrus…

I rode HTs for ages and always thought I would get a superlight – but when I test rode it felt like it was sapping energy from me on a climb unless I put the PP on.

I now have a flux (09 dw-link) and really like it – and no need to mess around with the PP ever. The Superlight is single pivot, the flux is one of the best performing suspension systems around with a bullet proof bushing system to back it up…

The ’10 version has an extra gusset at the junction above the BB as a small number have ‘cracked’ here – actually the weld has come apart (Turner use a good American frame builder so who nows why). But Turner CS is good and they would sort you out if you had problems, so I would take the discount myself.

The cable routing is also slightly different – the rear dr cable may route differently – on the 09 it is cable tied to the rear triangle in such a position that it could interfere with your calf if you really work the bike beneath you – but the superlight rear triangle bulges out a lot more and would interfere a lot more than the flux, even when riding normally – at least on my test ride.

Browse the mtbr forums and also read the reviews at

http://www.mtbr.com/cat/bikes/xc-suspensio/turner/fluxdwlink/PRD_425925_1526crx.aspx

yep, don’t compare it to the Wanga geometry.

I like my Wanga, very comfy, but only used it as a guest bike this year after building up my Turner Flux with the frame Tim sold me last year (with Mag/Ti Phil Wood BB).

I would imagine the Bizango is good as well if you can get one – the steel on my Wanga isn’t as refined as my old Explosif but the Bizango steel is similair. I think the D-Jab has a different target audience…

Isn’t it a Joe Murray design – so the angles are likely to be all right I would have thought.

Shame it’s taken so long to get to the having decent pictures – the BBC were demonstrating 1250 uncompressed lines of 16:9 HDTV goodness with 50fps in the late 1980s…

lots of deals on turner fluxes…

So they can confiscate your precious mountain bike, and fine you £20 as well…

trouble is that Kim is so lonely…

No one has mentioned “Life of Brian” ?!?

why would you want sealskinz when MW80 are goretex – are they not?

3rd alfa in a row here – two 156s 2.0 TS and now a GT 2.0 TS, all 2nd hand (156s were 8 month old demos, GT 6 year old).

1st 156 had some problems but was super comfy to drive, 2nd had only a couple of problems (clutch went just after I gave it away) but drove fantastically and was like a limpet on the road. GT doesn’t hold the road quite as well but gets my whole mountain bike in without touching the sides once I have taken the front wheel off.

Learnt to drive on my dads 1750 GTV which was lovely, but my alfas have been lovely as well, hence the third…

Try Hiscox.

Got a hooked plate holding my right collarbone together – another op in a few months to take it out :-(

Regarding those with nagging shoulder injuries above – I had a painful right arm after a rotator cuff injury and couldn’t get rid of the pain with stretching and exercise – it was scar tissue I think as an MRI looked ok.

But I fixed it when I swam round an island in the Maldives using just my arms in a breastroke fashion sweeping from above my head to right down near my crotch. Was snorkling so my head was facing down and I had the fish and reef to look at, and progress was slow (1.5 hrs to get round the island) but it fixed my arm nicely and built up my back muscles very quickly.

I have said this in other threads but worth repeating here as the results were so good and if anyone else is struggling with a shoulder/back problem…

2 weeks all-inclusive was £1250ish but when you add up the cost of all the physio appointments and gym membership that had no results it was good value indeed – plus all the beers were included :-).

Obviously I will be going again this year :-)

Have you tried turning it off and on?

How many times?

Doesn’t Katy write a lot of her songs – that’s a bit of a difference from Cheryl…

There’s an Ellesworth tandem that goes out with the MuddyMoles near the Surrey Hills sometimes – they take it down most of the gnarly stuff that the rest of the guys go down – scary…

I have looked around for something similar but not seen it yet.

I bought Anquet for its organisational capabilities but it is so slow on my dell precision laptop it is ridiculously unusable.

I might end up trying to write something suitable…

Love my Look 4x4s – easy to get into and out off and I have loads of confidence about coming out of them if I fall.

trouble is they don’t make them any more – but Crank are advertising new internals for this years eggbeaters, so maybe they are worth a look.

Halfords are nearly as bad as Richer Sounds…

Yep, Sideways dropped them…

The Wanga doesn’t look very steel to me :-(

Ditching lock ons for foam grips? Jeez, that is a serious step backwards

Why? some of them are pretty good plus grippy in the wet.

You could try 2×9 or 2×10 – I went with a middleburn duo and 11-34 cassette and pretty much have most of the range I had with 3 rings, apart from the ultra granny ratio which is near unusable anyway.

Apparently you can then save a bit more with a road mech on the front.

Looking for tyres with less rolling resistance might make more sense than dropping weight.

Also tuning the rear shock – the efficiency of the rear suspension is going to make a lot of difference trying to race a FS.

there are loads of reasons to use a PC as a hifi source – not using a CD drive with all of its problems (jitter, real time error correction).

Plus there are compression formats (FLAC for example) that are lossless.

You can also use pro standard hardware to give you a standard that you would pay an arm and a leg for as consumer hifi. Such as the Lavry or Benchmark DACs, or the Lynx soundcards.

You can also run software such as

http://www.acourate.com/

I find it interesting how Navratalova’s physique was quite feminine early on and then she suddenly she changed to the physique of a bloke…

As well as being a legend McEnroe’s play showed hints of him being a God – playing shots that no right-minded mortal would even consider…

I had a Minoura 5000, which looked a bit like the Tancho.

Not stable enough – gave it away.

Now I have a Feedback which is tripod style – good clamp and bloody stable – I have rotated the bike in the stand to near upside down to get to bits of the suspension with no problem which would have been impossible on the Minoura. Take a wheel off on the Minoura and it wants to fall over…

Zinn and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance