CG – if you’re not suziblue from another forum, well, … you should be – your stories are remakably similar. Isn’t there some way you can look back and just say, “Oh well” 🙂

It’s not surprising that most of the posts here involve either not sleeping with those pesky bi-sexual Swedish triplets, being unable to hold onto THE-ONE, or not not leaving the person who you thought was THE-ONE whilst THE-ONE got away. It’s the human condition.

Tazzy – you had a diseased mind – foggedaboudit. Wait, fohgetaboutit, whatever – you weren’t yersel’.

For those still in the midst of it, please remember to think positive – not a platitude – a real way of dealing with the bad ol’ crap that can and will mess with yer mind.

My unceasing and ongoing regrets would fill teh internets but I know I’ll be walking my dog on a windswept beach tomorrow, so I can handle them 😀

My Grandad’s now 99 – he worked developing radar through the latter years of the war. In the early years, his job (as a boffin) was to follow the frontline, run in and grab any captured technology, then figure out what it was and how it worked.

Only fired his gun to open locked doors, or so he told me when I asked, aged 12….

The only story he’s ever told me involved a few days leave in (IIRC) Swannage when he had a rare opportunity to meet his wife to be. The Germans bombed the shit out of the place and they ended up in a railway tunnel, watching the dead and dying being wheeeled past on luggage trollies. The next morning they found their hotel, in which all the windows had been blown out, where they sat quietly watching the sun rise.

I shed some tears, but fortunately, he was too blind to see them.

Oooh like that one rusty! Flare’s very ‘now’ doncha know… And that is some flare!

I have a Gelert Solo and an alloy replacement pole set. Never got round to actually replacing the poles – looks like a major faff-on. How do you go about bending the poles to the correct shape? Some of the sections are only about 15cm long with bends in them….

Do I need a pipe bending tool?

Actually – that’s quite representative of me on Sunday mornings….

My Avid 7s need a bloody good shove to get the pistons pushed back – may be worth refitting the old pads and really getting some weight on them. Just make sure you give it all a good clean up before the new pads go in.

I bought a set of THESE
about three years ago – loud as you like, really very good sound quality for what it is and only start distorting when the AA batteries die. Got mine on ebay for a shade over a tenner too – all good!

They’ve been taken on every camping trip and bike tour – got wet, had wine spilt on them – still going strong. Having said all that, I notice the place I linked to is out of stock – ebay maybe?

Aye, Faststone is the best standalone resizing prog I’ve ever used.

BigJohn – Member
I think the message it sends out (especially to the bride and her family) is that you’re really reluctant to leave your childhood behind.

Eh?! Why?

IME, it’s now very common – I go to a lot of weddings (it’s my job) and I would say that probably about a third of them have two best men. Works out fine usually – they may have to be reminded to curtail their speeches somewhat, but the BM’s speech is usually the only one which is any fun, so having two isn’t a bad thing.

What does grind my gears though, is brides who have anything more than four bridesmaids / flower girls. Trying to pose massive bridal parties is a PITA. Some have up to 14 😯

franksinatra – Member
I once seperated a fight between a couple of angry 7 or 8 year olds in the street.

I also did this a few years back at the local dry ski slope. Little bastard gave me a black eye! What can you do?!

Noisy neigh-bowers again? Not this old chestnut – I mean, who gives a fig? Had a proper chuckle at flippingheckler and neil-F.

All good stuff thanks! I’ve only ever bothered with MSE – I downloaded SAS last night just to see if it would find anything that MSE has missed. It didn’t and I shall uninstall it today. It really is just used for work, STW and Radio 4 so hopefully hasn’t picked anything nasty up!

Molgrips – I hear what you’re saying re sorting the machine but more RAM can’t hurt. If it’s still like molasses in winter, I’ll get a mate of mine in to have a look.

Cheers all!

You don’t need to bother with any of the companies house thing – she would operate as a sole trader – no need to register anywhere. It is worth checking 123reg.com before picking a business name – even if it’s just to check the chosen name isn’t too similar to any other businesses.

As far as SA is concerned, when you’re filling in the end of year SA form (online) you have the option right at the start to tell them how many different employers you have – dead easy!

Hmm. Cheers again to all. I’ll pop the case open tomorrow and order some new RAM then – cheapest option too – can’t be bad 🙂 Did this years ago for an old machine – is it still just a case of googling the serial number on the RAM, then hitting the ‘Buy’ button?

Is there good RAM and rubbish RAM?

Currently running super antispyware, just in case….

Thanks for the responses. So far as I understand it, readyboost is only supposed to help a bit whilst doing mundane tasks.

frogstomp – am I right in thinking an SSD drive would just work in tandem with the C drive? Is it difficult to set up, or is it plug and play? Never heard of swap files, and that makes me nervous 🙂

The drop in performance only happens when I’m processing big chunks of photos. It used to churn through them at a rate of knots but has slowed considerably in the last month. Done all the usual things; killed daft startup progs, backed up stuff I don’t need everyday and deleted it, ran a disc cleanup and all that…. I only have one game installed – it’s very much a work machine.

It’s a 500 GB hard drive with 350 free. The RAM is showing as 2807 total MB, 1676 available and 122 free. That’s just running IE. Is that normal?

More sympathy from me too – if only because we’ve also recently had a spate of electronic failures – washing machine, kettle, microwave all went in the space of a month. The hoover has been an ongoing warranty failure for months now. I was beginning to wonder if I’d borked the electrics somehow whilst fitting a new ceiling light…. Oh, and just remembered the set-top-box stopped working last week!

A wealthy friend of mine has given up buying top of the range microwaves and has settled for getting the cheapest in Tescos on the grounds that she only uses it for warming cups of milk and convenience foods and will simply replace it with another cheapie if and when it goes “kaput”. I can see her reasoning, but must be terrible for the environment.

We’ve done exactly this ^^^ That last microwave was a top-of-the-range Sharp thing. We’ve replaced it with an Asda £30 job and will continue replacing everything else with cheap, disposable shit as it falls apart – I hate the concept but really, have we been left with any choice? If top end gear is only built to last 2-3 years, might as well buy the cheap rubbish which will match it in longevity (or lack of).

I’ve got two Sansa players – a 4GB one which is getting on for being 4 years old now and still working, and a wee 2GB clip which I’ve had for a couple of years.

I only bought the clip so I could listen to audiobooks – the older players don’t support the format.

Both work very well, with minimum fuss / buttons. As above – cost is much less than ipod and the build quality (IMO) is better.

Besides which it is a bit of a contradiction really as a lot of “professional” photographers sell their own pictures on microstock sites. (the remains from paid shoots).

Would take a pretty special kind of photographer to do this – commercial contracts generally dictate that images cannot be used elsewhere for financial gain.

The only guys I know who make a (semi)reasonable amount from stock now are submitting dozens of images a week to reputable agencies like Photographers Direct and Getty. It’s pretty much a dead duck now.

Old thread about Ciaran Path

Me too – but it’s the newer version – the two batteries in the pics look like the old battery?

I replaced the stem and bars on my old Kona from the same period. Had to buy a headset adaptor for £10 – just slides into the steerer. Added a wee bit of weight but works fine and I no longer feel like I’m stretched out on a mediaeval torture rack, due to modern, short stem.

Kindly my wife pooped out of work

😆

EDIT: damn your fast fingers!!

There’s usally an option in the toolbar to make text either crisp or smooth (when you have the text tool selected) – might be worth trying ‘smooth’. I think it only gives you that option with its own fonts though, not with imported fonts….

Exactly what dreednya said ^^^ I also rode a few times in the recent snow wearing my big, clunky hiking boots. Toasty feet at the end and never even noticed I was wearing them. Used with SS Nanos.

Will it be unlocked again? Lots of useful info on that thread….

Was wondering about that…. Very odd!

At a very low point, I was given three basic rules to live by; positive thinking, leave people places and things better than you found them, self reliance.

They’ve served me well and can be applied to all manner of situations.

Thanks to John Ridgway and his amazing daughter. Best of British to you.

Christ! Well, as long as you’re laying off the booze, I see no reason why you shouldn’t come through this with no visible scars.

Chateau S*** 1984 vintage, I nearly passed out assuming it would be harmless.

An ex of mine used to bottle them as a kid – her brother did the same. She claimed that her brother had bottled a fine example as a ten year old, in a corked vase on her aunty’s mantlepiece. She opened it 12 years later and said the stench was palpable. I never believed her until now….

Also, right at the end of my degree course, I finally ended up in a pub, sitting next to the gorgeous Finnish girl who I’d admired from afar for three years (you can already tell this isn’t going to end well). She’d had a few, as had I, and the conversation had passed from flowing to flirty – she was leaning right into my space and smiling a lot…. I chose my moment and let slip a silent-but-violent.

Oh FFS, the stench was incredible – it filled our lungs like a liquid. We tried to carry on talking but the damage was done and she swiftly moved to another table. Can’t say I blame her 🙁

Another vote for the fender bender thingy. Had one fitted for a while now and no longer have to stop half way down every descent to cry my lenses out for 10 minutes.

Realman;

Never practised mouth to nose, is it fairly simple?

Our bi-annual first aid training is delivered by the stout fellows at the Mines Rescue Centre. They taught us the nasal technique using ‘Annie’ the plastic doll.

One trainer told us a particularly horrific story involving a guy whose jaw was hanging off – so mouth to mouth wasn’t possible. The casualty’s nose was full of snot and blood, so the first aider sooked it all out with his mouth, spat it out and began mouth to nose breathing 😕

ST subs just ran out – I will be re-subscribing though! Other than that, I buy the occasional armfull of wedding magazines just to see what my clients are being told to expect…. My God, but there’s some utter tripe being peddled in bridal mags!

He can only request your details if he is still in a transaction with you – and you would know he’d done it as you would also be sent his details.

As an aside, I’m definitely going to start barring bidders with less than 10 feedback – there’s so many total nutjobs out there. The latest one is complaining that he has to push the camera’s motordrive with his forehead to make it focus properly. I mean, WTF???!!

At least (I hope) you didn’t waste any of your lives trying to watch An American Haunting. That truly was shite. I quite enjoyed most of Revolver, but agree with much of the above too…

I’ve forfeited the use of my up-and-over garage door by bolting it to the concrete floor with three huge expanding bolts.

It took two thefts before I realised the door was made of tin-foil…. They’ve tried again since, as is evidenced by the burgular-bar marks at the corners, but they didn’t get in!

I can set my camera / flash up for any given situation without removing my eye from the viewfinder. Again – not so much a skill as lots of training…. I can also pick my nose, or touch the underside of my chin with my tongue.

I think I might be a bit sad.

Oooooh – get her 🙁

One last time….

It’s all yours – whatever I did, I’m sorry. Please don’t send me back there 😥

No-one? Well you’re too late now, it’s all gone a bit Bollywood / Adams Family….

konaboy2275 – Member
On a unrelated note, why are orthodox Jews so terified of dogs? The kids run screaming from our cocker spaniel when we take it out in the park on a Saturday…

Didn’t realise it was a cultural thing but can well believe it. I was taking photos with a large format camera on a tripod several years ago. My dog was sitting bored out of his mind waiting for the walk to re-commence.

A wee orthtodox Jewish lad suddenly jumped onto the wall behind me, saw my dog and ran screaming. He fell over at the bottom of the hill and scraped his face up on the gravel path.

I went down to see what the fuss was about and the whole family (of about six) were cowering behind Dad, who was looking distinctly green about the gills himself. He shouted that my dog should be on a lead (the dog was still sitting next to my tripod looking bored) and that all dogs were crazed beasts with bloodlust in their eyes – that’s almost a verbatim quote.

I called my dog and suggested that the children could give him a pat / dog biscuit – cue more terrified screaming. At this point the National Trust Nazi arrived on his little Shriner-car and started reading the riot act. I made my excuses and left.