First of all, well done. Leaving the plane that first time is the hardest part and, next time, it will be easier. Doing AFF in one hit somewhere warm is an excellent idea; Portugal and Spain both have good places for that and a lot of the UK clubs take people out there in groups over winter, so that could be an option for you.

Seriously though, good job! I’m glad you did it and I understand about the time and the weather. A van (or borrowing a caravan) helps a lot with that aspect and would save you that time. Or take a road bike with you to the DZ and treat a weather break as a training opportunity!

Have a Husqvana. Mowgli (his name is not a full replacement for a run around with the mower, but it keeps the grass to a manageable height when we are working.

Be aware that they have a boundary wire and more or less bounce around within that. Stones can be pushed into the wire, mice can chew it, and then it will stop working. I was hopign that it would be as smart as the robot vacuum I had, LIDAR Mapping, neat lines, but no. Mowgli does not like steep slopes and seems to love the gooseberry bush and one specific tree.

Giving a greyhound that’s had a life of racing a chance at a home is a really good call, but I remember them being the laziest dogs in the world (a couple of friends had them and they literally just slept for most of the day, breaking only to eat, fart and occasionally run around like a mad thing).

My default suggestion is spaniel, but GSP/GWP are good as well. For running/cycling, maybe Aussie Sheepdog? Spaniels are not all day running/cycling dogs. Hunting in cover: yes, trail dog: no.

@I_like_food

So? How was it?

Restaurant: Strela. It’s in the castle in Ljubliana and is really good.

Ok, I’ll say it… I kind of like the Sonder and it seems like it is a reasonable price and spec. I also like the idea of the Flat4 pedals and can see them being a decent commuter upgrade. Well I could if I did not love the V8s that are currently on that bike and the SPDs that are on my Stumpy.

Kinda, yes.

All the good jobs in my field are in Stockholm, but I have lived about 20km north of Uppsala for the last 2-3 years, so looking for new jobs is a challenge. The commute for me is a tasty 2+ hours of pubic transport, or about the same (depending on traffic) via a car with all the expense that comes with that. The one thing that annoys me is that my company is all over the country, so being in an office makes no sense.

It does seem that a lot of companies are really trying to push people back into the office though and the “hybrid” tag I see usually means “choose between office A or office B” or “three to four days in the office a week”. I spoke to one place recently and they were more or less ok with three days in the office (negotiable) but then later changed that to “we want a commitment for four in the office”. So that was a relatively easy decision of “no” from me.

I’d be ok with a job locally (i.e. Uppsala) that was not mandated 100% office based. There’s no need for it in what I do.

He’ll be editor of The Times or something within six months, whatever ACOBA says.

That  ^^^^ 100%. Please do look after yourself. Take some time to get stable and into a lighter, more happy place. I do not think that anyone can say you deserve it.

It depends a lot on what you want. Buying a finished product (QNAP or Synology or something) means you gain a lot of time and support. You feed it disks and it builds the array and stores your data. Software comes out that makes this process safer or easier. If something goes wrong, you can get a new one.

If you self-build, you need the parts, the learnings, the will to support it. If something goes wrong with, say, a system using RAID on a Pi5, you need to be able to felsök it and fix it. People have likely done that for you, but finding out what to do can be a pain.

It really sounds like you should trade off money for a more finished product, soemthing that should just work. But please, do not expose it to the internet and do choose a RAID model with parity so that, if/when a drive fails you can re-build the array.

Also, think about whether you really need M.2/SSD. Long term, bulk storage is best done on spinning rust and will be much cheaper than M.2.

I live overseas and am registered to vote in my old ward. This thread was a timely reminder to make sure I was registered to vote postally(?) and I have used the website to do that today. Amazingly, it was easy to use.

Anyway, my old ward is a die-hard Tory one. I live in hope that people are finally getting tired of their shit there and that the Lib-Dem or Labour candidates can take the seat off them. Sadly, the last time there was change (sitting MP defected to a pro-EU party), the new Tory came in easily with a large majority. They would vote for anything with a blue rosette there, despite Cambridge itself being mostly liberal and flipping between Lib-Dem and Labour.

When does the panel think that all large bike brands will be owned by Frasers Group, leaving only small, niche brands as independent until they get big and slowly get swallowed up into the ever expanding cloud of Sports Direct?

I think that is because a lot of the review technology is designed to specifically stop this kind of stuff from happening. If it were easy to do, then you could effectively flood a service/product with bad reviews to destroy its business, or spam out a product with good reviews even though it was shit. Amazon has a lot of time trying to stop that (well, they say they do) and it still happens.

So, people will need user account, prof of ID or a captcha or something to try and validate that the review relates to a person and an actual event that is legit.

Of course, AI will totally screw all this

The one on the left? I thought that was Bill Bailey.

Errrrr, fim-wise, no idea. D&D?

Speaking of good weather and short seasons, I spent the weekend at my DZ with near perfect conditions for a good weekend of jumping and had two of the most memorable jumps of my career so far.

The first was a duo jump to do a bit more prep for wingsuiting and was a really chilled and good experience. The second was with a relative new-starter and was the first time I have actually heard something other than wind noise in freefall. It was her first FS4 jump and she did an amazing job in freefall (hence the excited screaming in the exit) and did an amazing landing. I have never seen someone so pumped on landing and it is now firmly a memory of why developing new jumpers is the best and most amazing job.

On tunnel… Yes, it helps. If you can learn how to be stable and fly on heading in freefall, it helps in the air. It helps a lot. I’ve spent far too much time in the tunnel in the last six/seven years, but it kept me out of trouble over winter and did mean that I had the flying muscle memory when I started again in spring. As @stevesss said, muscle memory helps.

Oh yeah, about hanging out at a DZ. They are essentially daycare for adults. Just lean into that part.

Private Eye. I had a subscription before I left the UK and I still have one. It takes a while to get to me, but it is something I value greatly.

Yeah, did mine at Sibson over winter in 2017. Now over 500 jumps, D license holder and jump master in Sweden, so stuck with it. National champ last year (*cough* Rookie FS4) as well.

1) How quickly do I need to do the other stages? it’s going to take while with the cost/travelling. I would think doing them close together would be

8 AFF and then the consol jumps… If the weather is good, try and do them as soon as you can, but also try to understand that doing alllll of the jumps on the same day will be very tiring for you. You _will_ need time to process the jump and the learning points, so be aware of that. Three a day is a good numer IMHO.

2) how often do you need to jump to stay current?

As much as you can. I do about 100 a year, but to retain my D license I need 40. The season here is short (I only have 9 so far this year because it WAS FSCKING SNOWING two weeks ago) that I need to cram in a lot in a few months. In the UK you have a longer season. Hell, I did AFF in november and February, so you will be fine with getting jumps in whenever.

3) any tips?

Make good decisions and be safe. Do _NOT_ let your ego make decisions for you and _DO NOT_ be afraid of saying no to people. Jumping above your level of experience is a big cause of getting into trouble, so just bear that in mind. You can also hang out with people that have more experience and jump safely. Learn from their experience and mistakes rather than making those mistakes yourself. I was lucky there, my GF has 20+ years in the sport and 4000-ish jumps and a lot of my peer group is similar. Hell, my first trip out was to Alvor when she was team jumping and I got a good opportunity to learn when to not jump from that trip.

As a final point about freezing in the door, I don’t think so. As has been said, the training makes it very much a case of “out, in, arch” and you’ll not really have a chance to dwell on it. Just trust your instructors, listen to them and, please, leave your ego in your car.

Gimme a PM if you want to chat about it and please post back after the jump, it’s always nice to hear about that experience.

I’m waiting for the inflammatory comments

Quik is good for small edit jobs, Davinci Resolve if you feel like a challenge or need something with a lot of features. Mac: iMovie perfectly fine

Amazon has you covered on that… Buy some for your friends as well.

You can have combat consultants as technical advisors on set, you can even have actors who trained with FBI hostage rescue teams to make them realistic… but with 20 takes and 5 camera angles, that doesn’t get reflected in the editing room floor where they go for what looks cooler.

Unless you are talking about _that_ scene in Heat, which contains all the good action you could ever want, AND mag changes.

In most films though, the lack of proper drills and tactics annoys me, especially when you are told the character is “former special forces Marine Scout sniper cook weapons demo expert lawyer” or some other BS, but still holds their chrome Glock sideways.

Dear gods! When did tyres become such a minefield of choice??? I remember when it was Ground Control both front and back and just get on with riding!

FWIW, I quite like the Hans Dampf up front (no idea on compound). It grips well enough in sloppy, rooty garbage and runs tubeless well.

They are situational.

I use one for work to access stuff that is behind the firewall and, if I am travelling, I can choose to use one for normal browsing if I think that I need to, or if I have a legit reason to think that my traffic might leak info.

My main use case is masking my home IP when I am doing research on phishing/malware and or threat intel. For that, a free VPN is “good enough”, but I prefer something with a history of absolutely not taking logs or metadata and enough security to make sure that my ISP does not get nervous. I usually recommend Mullvad.

Free VPNs are like wearing shorts over a wetsuit (IMHO).

I had a split charger with a VSR in my T5, but went for a DC-DC system this time (Renogy) that also supports MPPT for solar (if I ever get around to it). I have battery and ancillary fusebox ready to go, but the system needs a feed that (I think) is live only when the ignition is on.

I could have used a VSR, the alternator is not one of the newer smart ones, but I can re-use the charger on something later on that is newer. Look at me thinking of the future, but screwing over present-me…

Currently debating the scoring with a friend. The differences could be anything from just different tastes in music to potentially repaying political debts (in a small way).

Eurovision has seen a lot of block voting in the past, but it’s difficult to see what could be the cause of some voting.

With that said, i have no idea what the music was actually like, I have early 90’s rave music on as I work. Oceanic FTW

Still not a patch on WindowsNT3.51Man

@slowol https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyckelharpa

I can’t really comment on the bike itself (I have a relatively old Suzuki Bandit for commuting, so more “sport tourer” than the cruiser style (and I use “sport” very carefully…).

But… It’s a 650, so can keep up with traffic even on the roads where people are determined to break records, and is still relatively agile through traffic. It does lack a top box though, s a commute for me means a rucksack with a limited amount of stuff in. GF has the newer, big-boy version of the Bandit with the touring pack and has a lot more options for storage, but only really uses the top-box as it gives her more margin when filtering.

If I was going for a new bike specifically for commuting, I’d probably go for something that was more touring/dual sport than sport. Maybe not full-on Africa Twin, but that sort of thing in maybe a 650 or similar size, again with a top box for storage. The more upright seating would, I think, give me a bit more visibility and that style would likely be more comfortable than my bike for longer commutes. Even though I am nearly 2m tall and the bike is relatively small, I am comfortable, but going fast and tucking into the windscreen for long periods is a bit of a pain, especially on the motorway.

Maybe it was just his partner’s mug. I know I am usually too tired and sleep-blind in the mornings to grab any specific mug other than one that will take a full stovetop full of hatefuel.

I would like to second the choice of a minion mug though. It would be both colourful and point-proving. You could always claim it was a present from your kids (with bonus points if work knows you do not have kids).

Worst: Stanstead – It just sucks, soooooo much. I hate it. I HATE IT.

Best: Arlanda (Terminal5) – so easy to get into and out of when travelling around Europe.

Honorable mentions:

Alderney (Good because they did an excellent bacon butty and because they never minded me rolling up 10 minutes before a flight)

HKIA (Good because queuing was minimal, but bad because luggage collection meant finding _your_ black bag on hard-standing packed with a couple of hundred other, IDENTICAL black bags)

Mesh? All the cool kids to backhaul over IP these days. Get a second AP up and wire it to the switch with Cat5e or 6. saves bandwidth on the WiFi that the mesh would use.

Tagiatelli is y go-to for creamy/chese sauces, but I find the stuff that I can get easily here lumps together to much on day 2 (aka box-meal use) and you end up with this kind of firm, slightly cheesy lump of carbs. Eating it at the time of cooking is good though and it is the only pasta I have made myself that has actually worked well.

Dammit. Nothing I can really add to this thread other than an internet hug and agreement that cancer can **** RIGHT OFF.

Yeah, had hens and a Springer. Dog was calm around them and, on summer days when he was with us in the garden, the hens used to roost on him when he was lying down.

Coincidence…. I am watching Predator 2 now and it is waaaay better than I remember it being. So 80’s/90’s, but an all-star cast and a genuinely different film as a sequel. Gary Busey in his prime too.

Favourite though? Too many to choose from. I love Aliens, Blade Runner, Akira, 2001, so many others. How can you choose just one?

One of the two of Open or Libre Office. GF uses one and has not really seen a problem with doing normal work on them. MS does love to push you to O365, but the tools there are limited.

That’s a lovely colour and the fork matches it really well. When are you planning on getting it covered in mud?

Speaking of batteries… The control module on our (new) 10kWh Huawei developed a fault about two weeks ago and decided it would failsafe to off. Slightly annoying as there have been at least some sunny days since it failed and exporting is not as good for us as storing.

That said, a good sunny day has seen our usage from the 7kW string of panels average out at about 20% less than before (even including the car charging).

I could really do with rotating the workshop roof about 30 degrees to the south, but I think that might be a little too much to do…

WCA, surely you need a Decathlon eBrompton-esq bike to get to the station?

Damn! That looks amazing!! Assuming Phil is ok?