We got one for the boy for Christmas and I’ve since rooted it, added the Play store and removed the lock screen ads. Simple(ish).

It does what he needs it to do (although I’m struggling to get it to act as a Raspberry Pi screen, but I’m a moron).

Tisn’t them apparently. Can delete the post anyway I think.

Deleted

(Is that against forum etiquette/ rules?)

“These aren’t the clubs you’re looking for”

What, none of those, not even any on the UKTC link?

At least give us the postcode…

Is it this one[/url]?

Or this one[/url]?

Or this one[/url]?

Or one of these (please give me a clue though)?

ps. This is my Thread Of The Year

Haven’t read all that ^^^

I’ve got a District that I’ve been commuting on for the last 5 years or so, and it’s been brilliant. It’s had 1 belt in that time and very little maintenance other than the usual for hubs, headset, BB etc. Works faultlessly and you don’t need to worry about the maintenance of the belt at all.

When the belt failed (and in hindsight it was on its way out for a while) I stripped half the teeth off it. I was trying to test if it was the hub or the belt that was at fault though, so cranking it up a big hill. The belt creaks a lot when the teeth are worn to the point of failure, which is a sound to listen out for after a few years of use.

Yes, you need a specific frame for one. Yes, you need to think about hub gears or SS. Yes, they’re fit and forget for the most part. Yes, you will eat through BB bearings fairly regularly.

My TCO has been the bike, 6 BBs and 1 belt, plus brake pads and the usual “wear and tear” items from a regular bike. But of course, minus the faff of chains and mechs. Perfect for commuting IMO.

Old socialist womaniser grandpappy Chewkw failing you, that’s what.

I tend to agree that there are too many people around for us to sustain our current global (/western) standards of living for too much longer. I’m agnostic when it comes to the culling though <wanders off to watch Utopia>

ps. I’ve been reading this thread for a while now, but I’m not getting drawn into the mire, so don’t be offended if I don’t reply to your reply.

We know the reason Chewkw doesn’t like socialists now, don’t we.

Hate the player not the game, dude.

I have a signed copy of this

I like my Jabra Rox, but have never done any running in them, so can’t say if they fall out or not. Sound’s good from them though, and I found mine for about £30 or so.

Superlightweight – give me a shout when you’re selling the Saab…

@ Jambalaya, yes the welfare budget is huge, but then so’s the tax evasion being conducted by big business and suchlike: some tax research bloke[/url] and some lefty website[/url] and finally the Evening Standard from 3 years ago.

Some of this is individual tax “planning” and some corporate, but it seems to be the general consensus across lots of different data that around £35bn is lost in corporate avoidance each year (which despite Toby Young’s[/url] opinion, would go a long way to helping to avoid cuts to key public services, regardless of if YOU think they’re valuable)

We’ve just had a 28% cut in our production workforce announced, after an 18% cut in August.

That’s private sector.

Woo hoo.

People spelling pear wrong. Twice.

My mate took the B&W Blencathra one and I can attest to the voting system being biased to the person who has the most effective spamming advertising campaign.

Squoglybob you are James Martin and I claim my £5.

To the other players/ ex-players, I play too (or at least did, and got suckered in again for 2 games this season), so I (generally) know the rules but didn’t think explaining the finer points of blocks in the back, clipping etc was warranted. A lot of the clips are also old, and the specific helmet crown rule in the NFL is fairly recent.

George Carlin did a nice comparison between football and baseball:

ps. it’s only a penalty if you get caught.

It’s a bit more than “get in someone’s way” molgrips: a lead blocker can floor anyone that’s in front of them as long as they don’t grab them.

Watch #10 on the offense in the second clip get cleaned out by #80. That’s a block.

Didn’t read everything up there, but I had a similar one for a Mini Cooper earlier this year. Same sort of vehicle isn’t it, insofar as they hold their value and are sought after.

Anyway, the ad said somewhere in England (I think in the South East) but the reply said the car was in Wick in the Highlands, so viewing would be difficult. I declined and forgot about it. Then an almost identical ad came up again (may have been one on Autotrader and one on Gumtree actually).

Someone falls for it sometimes, otherwise they wouldn’t do it.

Just as a counter to the whole Road To Serfdom bullsh!t, have some Polanyi.

I was, but now I’m not, but I still live here…

I’d say that any contracting there is a very good thing as the money always seems to be very good, and the location is really what you make of it. Barrow’s not as bad as people make out, it’s just a schlep from the motorway. But, as an example, Coniston’s 20 minutes away.

The A590 is a decent road and from Kendal would take you 45 minutes on average (no speeding etc). If there’s a crash or some other delay it can cause a problem though, as it’s not dual carriageway all the way through.

If you want a chat let me know.

+1 to what Flaperon said.

Which Garmin unit are you using, and which Polar strap? I have the HRM-Run and a Polar Wearlink style strap. DC Rainmaker Article

Aside from it being less prone to breaking (which I didn’t experience), the Polar strap is much more reliable with the measurements staying consistent. I experienced the Garmin strap causing a drop of in HR after 20-30 minutes: I know I don’t run at a HR of 75bpm…

I’d read all the previous posts but it’s not within my gift…

WTF does “jellybean the options” mean?!

How’s it gone with this?

Ah… YGM

You’ll need experience after the course to become an auditor. Will your employer let you conduct external audits to gain experience?

IME most accreditation auditors have years of experience as well as specific knowledge.

It’s worth it considering the tiny parts inside and that the lubricant dries out in the course of a few years.

I do think it’s taking the mick a little in terms of price, but if you’ve spent several hundred (or thousand) quid on a watch, then it seems daft to scrimp on the servicing, especially if it’s a watch that will appreciate if it’s kept in good condition.

I have mine done every 5 years, so spread yearly the cost isn’t too[/i] bad, but also the servicing is guaranteed for a year. Doesn’t sound too important, but last March when I was changing the date on mine the crown popped out and it was still (just) under service guarantee, so it was a free repair.

I was really keen on one this time round, but as a lot of previous posters have said, there’s too much uncertainty regarding the product.

I’d have considered it for £1000 or a little more, but £1700 is a lot, especially considering I could get a known-quantity Ventana for that sort of money, and they have the heritage too.

And the subcontractor is Foxconn, so it’ll be easier for them to use their existing process line to build it. It’s all about the bottom line!

You can’t control who buys your brand (Burberry?), but it still doesn’t detract from the quality of the product.

Rolex are one of the few mechanical watch manufacturers who own their entire supply chain, which is incredible given the size of the business.

That probably doesn’t matter to many people though.

Large amounts of coins
Several hair clips
Many hair bobbles
Lego (individual bricks and creations)
Wool (killed a pump)
Sundry tiny toys
An 8mm spanner (that was my only contribution to the ongoing catalogue of washing machine detritus)

Not helped by the fact that Ariston think it’s funny to design washing machines that the filter has to be accessed from the back, by undoing a big plastic clip on a rubber gaiter directly attached to the bottom of the drum. Dumb. Ass.

Not forgetting Hot Tub Time Machine.

(which I secretly quite like)

It’s basically what Chiefgrooveguru said up there: they are very good at going uphill and seem to hold traction where other designs don’t, with the rider seeming to have to do very little. Even though my body hates it, I like riding up hills, and I enjoy technical trails. The Monolink design is well suited to that, and to riding singletrack. I didn’t like the stiffening up on standing downhills which is why I sold it.

Whoever said it was URT doesn’t understand the design, as it’s semi-urt with the BB independent of both front and rear frame sections. Mostly.

FWIW, having ridden some trails in Vancouver before I had the Maverick, it would have worked really well on the XC stuff out there. Take it on the downs and it’d be outclassed by a more active design, but that was my previous point.

Also, what Vinneyh says is, IMO, true too in that the performance advantage of the Monolink has been matched by the advances in shock damping circuits (was the 5th Element the first platform damped shock in the early 2000s? a year or so after the first Maverick was available).

I think the discipline I mentioned before was Super D or some other made up awesome name.

Also, I’m most definitely not gullible when it comes to this stuff, and I have a fair level of engineering knowledge & experience, so I think I can understand how mountain bike suspension works, but thanks for patronising me.

Maverick’s design was never intended to be a WC DH winning one – it was meant for real-world use by normal people. That they were used on early Enduro style races (they were called Super D or something like that) in the US, with up and down sections sort of points to their intended all-round use.

It’s nice how everyone’s open-minded about all this though.

CBA to read all of ^^^that^^^ but, my tuppence worth is a mix. I bought a new ML7/5 from Skyline in 2006 (maybe, it was around then) and it was excellent all around South Wales and bits of the Lakes that I rode. They do climb incredibly well (which was a big part of why I bought it).

However, I had a problem with the shock getting stuck down in the middle of a descent, which messed my day up pretty comprehensively, and the subsequent 3 months without the bike was unacceptable. I guess I started to question the reliability.

The other thing that I grew to realise was that I didn’t like the way the suspension stiffened up when out of the saddle, and ultimately the combination of these two things meant I sold it. All of the experience I have of the suspension is of course not backed up by any empirical data.

I do love the forks though, and regret selling the DUCs and the SC32s I had.

Does the college season start that early?

Unfortunately, my parcels are longer than their maximum. 🙁

CBA to read most of pages 2 & 3… but, IME of belts (4 years and perhaps 4000km, so not up there with some of the distances discussed earlier) I’m on my second belt on a singlespeed commuter. It’s geared so that hills are a pain but the torque I’m putting through the drivetrain on steeper stuff must be quite high (and I don’t meant that I’m ace, just that in those situations, to move the bike along the rider needs to really get some leverage on the cranks).

I too have experienced the increased frequency of replacing BBs (perhaps one every 6-8 months).

My main reason for purchase was the low maintenance aspect. Apart from whole bike cleaning I never touch the belt in normal service – no oiling, degreasing or anything.

When the belt failed I actually thought my rear cog was stripping the splines off the freehub so I tested it by riding up a steep hill one evening and ended up stripping half the teeth off the belt. On inspection the remaining ones were worn to a triangular profile, and the creaking noise I thought was my freehub was actually the teeth shearing at their base.

I love my belt drive but I can see that in conditions where there’s debris getting into it, or where its being loaded from the side, then a belt would fail a lot more quickly than I’ve experienced.

Oh, and almost anything with Steven Seagal in it, barring the obviously brilliant Under Siege.