Another vote for a Cateye Volt 300. Lasts a ridiculous amount of time on pulse mode, and is fine for unlit paths. Also micro-USB chargeable so you can charge it easily almost anywhere.

Waterproof and breathable – yep.
Waterproof and breathable enough to be useful when doing exercise – not so much.

I want a seat to take the boy (he’s 12 months old) to nursery. The tricky part is that I need the bike to get me to work afterwards (another 3 miles) so I don’t want anything that’s awkward for speed commuting. Which makes me think the wearied is off the table. Will look at the Yepp.

What’s wrong with having them ride behind you?

This is what I do. 1.5km to kindy with the four-year-old riding his own bike, baby up front on mine. Then on to daycare for the wee fella, and I leave the seat there for my wife to pick up when she collects him. The Yepp attaches/detaches using one hand in about three seconds – press a button, slide the catch back and that’s it.

The bracket that stays on the bike is very small:

Edit: Nothing wrong with having them on a rear seat, but when they’re really young I prefer them up front where I can see them. It also allows you to interact with them more than you can when they’re at the back.

Cheaper ones won’t have a charge regulator, so it’ll be trying to charge the battery whenever there’s enough sunlight. I seem to recall that this is not good for lead-acid batteries, which is what they typically have. Kills the battery after a bit. You may have to spend more to get something with more brains and/or a battery better able to cope.

Woe betide you, shirley?

“Damn, blast and botheration” is one I use from time to time.

Loads of threads on this subject, do a search. My usual comment is that the Yepp Mini is worth a look.

I had a Weeride but a) the big heavy bar which remains attached to your bike is big and heavy, b) the big heavy bar creaked with frame flex (although I had an early model, they may have addressed this in later models), and c) it interfered with my knees too much as it’s hard plastic and relatively wide. This is very subjective though, purely down to a rider/frame combo.

The Yepp Mini has a very discreet bracket which mounts on the steerer tube either directly above or below the stem (for aheadsets) or clamps onto the steerer for other head sets. I used it for my eldest a few years ago and am currently using it for my 9 month old. He seems perfectly happy in it, even fell asleep the other day.

For me, and my particular frame/body combination, the Yepp has loads better knee room. It’s also soft (same foam stuff as Croc shoes are made from) so accidental knee-strike is painless.

Also, since it’s nearing winter in your part of the world, I highly recommend the Hamax poncho. Folds down into its own pocket, easy to deploy in grotty weather, keeps the wee one nice and dry (and warm).

Why not just level the floor locally, to create a little plinth for the sink and mashing machine to sit on? Knock together some shuttering and fill with concrete. You’ll be creating a ‘wedge’ of concrete, and with a washing machine vibrating away on top it may attempt to travel down the slope. To counter this I’d drill two or three holes in the floor, along the width of where the plinth is going to go, and stick some short lengths (100mm) of rebar in. Say 50mm deep holes, with 50mm rebar sticking out. When you pour the concrete the rebar will be covered, and these pegs will anchor the plinth and stop it going anywhere.

Like this naff-tastic Word-art technical drawing:
[/url]Plinth by W Hyde[/url], on Flickr[/img]

I have an Elephone P9000, bought from Gearbest. It’s big (at 5.5inch screen it’s a ‘phablet’ i.e. phone/tablet) but I have big hands so no problem. For a kid? might need to check out some 5.5″ phones first.

But it’s excellent, came with Android 6.0, 16 Gb of internal storage plus room for a micro SD card, seems to handle everything it needs to do. Not a single bit of random Chinese bloatware on it, it was a very ‘clean’ OS straight out of the box. Very happy with the cameras so far too (although I’ve only used it for holiday snaps thus far).

mrlebowski – Member
…FOUR TIMES.

That’s not a strength.

That’s a sign that you were in the wrong business..
On the other hand, that’s four times from something like 500 businesses (or so I understand) he has put his name to (i.e. those which are/were considered to be ‘his’ businesses). In that light, fewer than 1% going bankrupt over a career seems not too bad, especially when you consider TJ’s last point, it’s not unknown for people to collapse businesses on purpose to minimise losses.

Not that I’m defending him, mind you, I can’t decide whether he’s just a prize womble or some sort of sociopath.

I’m less of a jumper and more of a big girl’s blouse… That video in the OP is exactly why my wheels never leave the ground!

3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life Of… by Arrested Development. On cassette.

It was the first album I ever bought with my own money. Quite liked Mr Wendal, but the rest was shit. Made me realise that hip-hop/R&B wasn’t for me :-)

Next albums purchased were Aerosmith’s Get a Grip and Metallica’s Black album, still two of my all-time favourites.

On a recent trip to Aus we met up with some relatives from the UK, including two of my nephews aged five and ten. On arriving at the holiday park and checking out the pool we spotted an ibis wandering about:

They asked what it was and I deadpanned “Brain-sucker bird. See that long beak, they slide it in your ear while you sleep and pull out bits of your brain to eat.”

They were terrified of the things for the rest of the holiday :twisted:

If in Queenstown, get the bus to Milford Sound – the scenery is amazing and I imagine it’d be hard to concentrate if you’re self-driving! We had a great driver who did a running commentary along the way, and you stop at all the view points. You can get the ferry out and back along the sound – stunning in good weather, more atmospheric & better waterfalls in bad weather, so a win either way.

OP – if on the North Island, Rotorua is worth a visit for the novelty value – geysers, bubbling mud pools, boiling lakes, take a swim in a hot stream in the woods (look up kerosene creek). The town itself isn’t much though (but second Mike’s tip on Brew bar), but a good base for a few days of superb riding in the Redwoods/Whakarewarewa. There’s a shuttle service in the forest which is great even if you’re not into gnar, saves your legs so you can ride more trails if you’ve only got a day or two. Hire bikes are available at reasonable rates, might pay to book ahead if you’re coming in the summer.

The Tongariro Crossing is stunning, I can’t recommend it enough. I’ve done it twice, drove past it last week and am now keen to try a spring crossing when there’s still a bit of snow about. A side trip up Ngauruhoe (aka Mt Doom) is do-able if you’re fit – 45 mins inching up the scree, 5 mins running back down :D

Personally in two weeks I’d do:
3 days in ‘Vegas – 1 doing geothermal stuff, 2 biking.
2 days in National Park or Turangi while you do the Tongariro Crossing
Fly to the South Island – Franz Josef/Fox/Mt Cook/Lake Tekapo area for afew days
Queenstown, day trip to Milford Sound, bit of jetboating.

With the travelling inbetween that’s probably a bit of a stretch time-wise, it takes longer than you think to drive places and public transport is pretty thin on the ground.

Our four-year-old is too young to be losing teeth yet, but I’ve got my excuses lined up for if I’m ever caught: the tooth fairy was really busy tonight and asked me if I could help out… Should be ok with that :-)

Quite enjoyed it. Season 4 is a bit darker than the earlier ones, and is all the better for it.

I’ve just started Homeland – cracking start so far, two episodes in – and have The Wire lined up for afterwards.

More recently, I had my melon twisted by an optical illusion. A guy at work mentioned one he’d seen on facebook which was a picture of a brick wall, and the question “Can you see anything unusual?” I spotted “it” strait away, and we discussed the varying lengths of time it takes people to get it. He’d been stumped for a couple of minutes, but once he’d seen it, couldn’t un-see it. His wife, even after having it pointed out, still struggled, but had seen it. (I won’t explain more in case anyone wants to have a go).

Anyway, I mentioned how it was like The Dress that did the rounds a while back. He’d somehow never heard of it, so off we went to his desk to google it. Looking at the image on Wikipedia, it was exactly as I remembered it, very obviously white and gold (although shot in light with a blue-ish hue). Over the course of a few minutes of discussing it I noticed that if I viewed his monitor from above the image seemed to be more clearly white and gold. So I checked it from a low angle looking up, and it looked blue and black. Weird, but I put it down to how LCD monitors are made/operate as I’ve noticed colour shifts due to observation angle before.

And then, as I was in the middle of a sentence, I was looking at the screen and time seemed to slow down, just a fraction of a second in slo-mo, and the dress was now blue and black. I was properly discombobulated. Real slack-jawed, open-mouth speechless. The dress now looked black and blue from all angles, and the idea that it could ever have been white and gold seemed ridiculous, it was a real cognitive dissonance moment. I was in a bit of a daze for the rest of the afternoon, it really shook me up (but not in an unpleasant way, I was just a bit spaced out).

I just googled the image again now, writing this, and it’s white and gold as it was originally…

Whilst living in Toulouse as a student, a group of us went off on a weekend on the piss in some beach town, possibly Biarritz, although could have been somewhere in northern Spain (bit hazy).

We never booked accommodation on these jaunts, just took sleeping bags and blankets and found somewhere to crash. On one occasion we found a nice patch of short grass and soon fell asleep/passed out. At some point we all woke each other up to shouts of “oh shit it’s raining”, but just as soon as it has started, it stopped again. Then started again. Then stopped. Took a while to work out that we were on a golf course and the sprinklers had come on…

So we decamped to the beach, in the dark. In the early hours of the morning we were woken up by a car which came and parked nearby on the road at the top of the beach. Big Merc Sedan, all the doors open, stereo on, Eiffel 65’s “I’m Blue” on repeat very loud. Four oriental blokes in suits got out, and came down to the beach about 50m from us, followed by a boy who looked about ten who was holding towels. The blokes stripped naked, had a quick swim/splash about in the waves while the boy stood on the beach with the towels and clothes. Then they got out, dried, dressed, got back in the car and drove off.

As it got light in the morning we all started waking up (realising that if you sleep on a beach you end up quite damp in the morning). One of the group, Big Dave, pointed out a bloke in the distance, walking along the beach and looking furtive. He sidled up to a wooden beach hut and spent a couple of minutes apparently cracking one out (his back was thankfully to us), then walked off.

We weren’t even on drugs that night, just beer and Pastis 8O

Back when my wife and I were courting, she sneezed whilst ironing an item of clothing one morning, and tore one of her intercostal muscles in the process. Hit the deck in agony, squawking for help. Having recently got out of the shower she was only wearing a towel, and refused to let me ring for help until she’d got dressed. And she needed a wee too, so I had to carry her to the loo, then the bedroom, dress her, then ring the doctor (after all this messing about we at least realised it wasn’t an emergency, so didn’t need to ring 999).

The doc did a house call, gave her a prescription for diclofenac and said to stay in bed until it got better. Given that she was in agony just with breathing, it was an uncomfortable few days until she could move again.

So, while a torn muscle is thoroughly unpleasant, it’s way better than a knackered disc, so here’s hoping it’s just that!

Also, the “you’re as daft as me then?” exchanged grins with other cyclists when it’s raining sideways.

Loads of herons and kingfishers, the occasional hawk. Seeing the long line of queuing traffic on the freeway on the far side of the estuary and feeling smug.

But mostly riding with my 4-yr-old son and dropping him off at kindy on the way to work. Seeing him progress from being scared of downhills after a couple of big stacks, to insisting I ride on ahead and check for cars coming out of driveways so he can fly down the hill, trying to beat his own record for how far he can get up the hill on the other side. Magic 8)

Do you get to keep the remaining bit of bone once they’ve whipped it off? I’m sure with some imagination it could be put to amusing use :D

Ooooh nice, may have to acquire that and store it away for a bit – he’s only four! And obviously it’d need to be tested now and again while in storage, by an experienced builder :-)

CaptainFlashheart – Member
8860 FTW!

I recently bought that on ebay, having had it as a kid (little bro has taken ownership of all Lego unfortunately…) It’s sitting in the garage waiting for my eldest (aged 4) to have enough patience to be able to build it.

He’s currently into space stuff, since we watched the ISS go over the other week. I bought the wee space shuttle kit as a stop-gap until this arrives:
8)

If he can build that, then he can have a crack at the 8860 Chassis.

And now thanks to Notter I’m going to have to buy the Knights’ Castle, one of my all-time favourites…

18,285 km or 11,362 miles from the hospital to my house.

Yeah, there have been rumblings in the press here about having to play the toughest* teams twice. Bringing in the new teams can only be a good thing, in a wider view of the sport, but the current format is pants. I think the table shows it all – even the Blues, who have had a shit season, look like they could make the payoffs.

*in their own opinions, but probably true.

I found this jaw dropping – the dominance of homicide vs suicide between black and white gun deaths

It would be good to see the same data portrayed in terms of deaths per million people, say, rather than as ‘equal’ values of 100%. That way it’d be not only obvious how the % homicide/suicide rates change, but also the overall number of deaths per capita compare for each group.

Also, the current troubles seem to revolve around black vs white. Wikipedia (yeah, I know, but I’m reasonably confident isn’t far off the mark here) says that Hispanics are 17% of the population, whereas black Americans are about 13%. Is there a similar disparity in Hispanic deaths?

I may have spent inappropriate amounts of money reacquiring various Lego sets from my youth via ebay. The annoying thing is that I know most of them are stuck in my little brother’s loft, after my mum gave them to him following a loft clear-out. He’ll never let go of them though, claims they became his after I’d left home. Bloody younger brothers :evil:

I’m just about to buy a big space shuttle set for an obscene amount, following my eldest’s recent discovery of space – he was completely dumb-founded when we watched the ISS go across last week and I explained that there are people living up there.

Have a look at NZO Sifters, slim-fit baggies which are fine for the pub/beach/park etc.

Also Supertankers or Double Happys are good too.

Quick-drying, designed for cycling with stretchy bits as appropriate, minimal but useful pockets.

ads678 – Member
it’s the only thing that can improve a simple egg sandwich
WT actual F!

Have you never heard of Bacon!!
That there would be a bacon sandwich, possibly a bacon and egg sandwich, or maybe a bacon sandwich with egg. The superior food in a sandwich defines the type of sandwich, and bacon is superior to all foods.

It’s because of its lack of versatility. As you say, it’s the only thing that can improve a simple egg sandwich – which is already near the pinnacle of perfection anyway.

But, modern science has yet to find a single other use for cress, hence the lack of love.

Good reflexes at 2.30am and the ability to make a watertight bowl from your hands.

The ability to ignore the smell of vomit which you can’t shift from your hands…

Well, this is a head-scratcher…

One up one down.

Dios mío, man…

I’ve just started View From the Summit by Sir Ed, he has such a nonchalant way of describing edge-of-the-seat adventure, it’s great. Easy reading, Boys’ Own adventure stuff with proper heroes.

After a manic few days at work I forgot about the footy altogether, have just sat down with my morning coffee to browse the Beeb sport page and find that not have England done themselves proud again, Deadly has used his ill-gotten gains to rig the Italy-Spain match, robbing me of my retirement fund in the process. Booo to everything :x

Luckily, being a mongrel Brit I can now follow the mighty Wales…

As above, anything branded is almost certainly fake, and I wouldn’t touch anything ‘safety critical’ like carbon seat posts and bars etc. but I’ve bought loads of homebrew gear from there – weldless stainless steel fittings, hop spiders and such like. And loads of quadcopter bits’n’pieces, cheap and cheerful, do the job just fine.

If they can get UK passports that get it for them a.s.a.p. because that is proof of citizenship.

That’s the thing, it seems like a bit of a waste of money getting a passport they don’t need. There doesn’t seem to be any other way of getting them ‘into the system’ though.

If they were born in the UK they’d have UK birth certificates, be registered etc, and so wouldn’t need a passport to prove citizenship.

Apologies for the slight de-rail, but since we’re on the subject…

My wife and I are British, born and raised in UK to UK parents (except my FiL who’s Irish). We moved to New Zealand and had two kids here, they are both NZ citizens by birth. Now, as far as I can tell, both boys are British by descent, i.e. born to British parents but not born in Britain. But it’s not clear to me (and my Google-fu has failed me thus far on the matter) whether, if we were to move back to the UK, they would need to apply for anything, i.e. some sort of affirmation of status.

They can get UK passports no bother, which would essentially prove citizenship, but they don’t need passports as they already have NZ ones. Here in NZ you can apply for citizenship and be granted it, without needing to get an NZ passport. I can’t seem to see a similar procedure for the UK.

So if I give you twice as much this time do I get twice as much back when I win? I didn’t realise investing money was this easy!

BOOM! La Roja have finally woken up 8)

You may as well stick the cash in my account now DD, foregone conclusion and all that…