Love my CAAD10 as it is seriously comfortable. What about one of the new Mason cycles frames. Loads of pictures on Instagram and they look great.

http://www.masoncycles.cc

If there is ever a company that needs to get a decent industrial designer is Planet X.

http://www.planetx.co.uk/i/q/CBPXRT90TEAM/planet-x-rt-90-elite-team-edition-road-bike

Bloody awful and probably a decent bike

Have a look at headset press

http://www.headsetpress.co.uk/feature/bespoked-bristol-2015/

Silence when the kids go to sleep

I know you can use outlook but wanted something a bit simpler.

Bump for the afternoon crowd and anyone riding Sunday mornings.

I have converted an old Apple Time Capsule to be the NAS drive so none of the consumer apps such as Synology work with it. All the apps I have found so far are just really crap and have terrible interfaces.

Thanks guys

Memory will make a massive difference. Chuck in as much as you can as it is really cheap for the improvement. The other thing to look at would bra complete rebuild from scratch not just an upgrade to josemite. You should still be able to get half decent performance.

Saturday morning bump

I know slightly over budget but get a Dahon Vigor. So much better than the cheaper models as a lot sturdier and better made. A lot of the cheap folders flex like mad. My wife has one and I was riding it the other night whilst adjusting the gears and actually thought what a bloody good bike

http://www.winstanleysbikes.co.uk/product/67919/Dahon_Vigor_P9_Folding_2014_Bike

One of the good things about Apple products is they hold their value. Buy a £399 iPad Air and you could easily still get over £300 for it on eBay when the next model comes out. Try that with a Samsung and you might get £100 pushing it. I have to buy the latest model every time they come out for work and we then sell off the older model. Never end up loosing that much sometimes only £50 for a iPad that is at least a year old.

Bought a handheld Dyson and very pleased with it. Have a look on eBay as there are official reconditioned Dysons on there. We got ours for £150.

Converted T5 and pay around £300 including the use for commuting. Getting the conversion certified was easy enough. Just needed to send pictures to the DVLA and insurance company.

Like carbon all depends on the bike. Back in the day ali used to be tough as hell but now it’s much better. I have an ali cannon dale road bike and it is super smooth. All depends on the frame design.

Bit of a plug but I have a mint condition Crank Bros Joplin 4 in 31.6 with a lever if your interested. Only used twice.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/fs-crank-bros-joplin-4-dropper-post-316?replies=1#post-6630324

Might find a bit of meditation helps clear the mind, I read this the other day http://www.how-to-meditate.org/breathing-meditations.htm/

The other one that works really well is this stuff, loads of people I know use it and really rate it. http://www.thisworks.com/sleep/sleep-category/deep-sleep-pillow-spray.html

Remember that it is not just about speed. Many 4g contracts have far lower download amounts than non 4g contracts. So you get super fast downloads but blow through your free allowance really quickly, they then charge you a whole chunk more. This is what happened with me and EE so I went back to the non 4g contract with unlimited downloads. A tad slower but a massive amount cheaper.

If only we knew which factories made branded forks or even on-one forks. At least we would then know the factory was half decent.

Wow Spacehopper that is cheap. Was that local plumber or national company?

Thanks all. It’s a 32kw CDI boiler so looks like price is about right. Typically we need it done before Christmas so not much time to get other quotes!!

Good yo know it is the right ball park

Thanks all. It’s a 32kw CDI boiler so looks like price is about right. Typically we need it done before Christmas so not much time to get other quotes!!

Good yo know it is the right ball park

We bought a Dahon Vigor a couple of months ago that my wife uses to commute on. Tried loads of different bikes and this rode substantially better than the cheaper dahons. A lot more solid and less flexy than of others and with a decent set of gears. Really can’t fault it after it being used daily and my wife loves it. Mud guards were easy to fit. Seems a decent quality bike and pretty light weight. Some folders weigh an absolute ton.

http://dahon.com/mainnav//single-view/bike/vigor_d9.html

Winstanley cycles do them at a cracking price of £420

http://www.winstanleysbikes.co.uk/product/67919/Dahon_Vigor_P9_Folding_2014_Bike

an iPad is not really a replacement for a PC. It is terrible for things like excel and remember that any website that uses flash will not work on an iPad. As someone who uses an iPad everyday I find them terrible for any websites where you need to put lots of detail in or that has drop down boxes. e.g try booking a flight or holiday on a iPad, what fun you will have. Great from emails, browsing the web and watching videos but not a replacement for a PC.

If you want a tablet that works as a PC then have a look at a Microsoft Surface as the addition of a cursor and mouse makes things like excel so much easier.

Used them a few times and always good. It is Christmas remember so post is especially slow

Ceeway are great for stock but Bicycle Academy also sell tubing and all the parts you need, they are a tad cheaper for some bits as well.

Just got a Exposure Diablo from Evans for £80 as they price matched Winstanley and also used Tesco club card points that get doubled. Happy boy here as I also saved £40 off a Rapha Rain Jacket yesterday!! Commuting kit now all sorted. Sorry to be smug

It all depends who is selling them. Any decent bike shop would not sell anything that is dangerous

Thanks all

I agree a 20X zoom is probably overkill but that’s what the wife wants so happy to go along with her.

I know that the customer has a choice to inspect and decided if the product is acceptable and I agree that tattyness does not impede their function but it is still a product that does not survive well in the environment that it is designed for. Of course there is a balance between durability and design but how many bikes are powered coated which is much tougher or even use special paints to stop them looking good for longer. Remember the Marin’s back in the day with there rubbery paint. I don’t expect a product to look good for years and years but you do hope it will carry on looking good for some time.

We wouldn’t be happy if clothes started looking crap after a few washes.

I guess it is manufactures making a product that looks the best in the showroom to get the sale but then to do this compromising on the longer term cosmetic durability.

I disagree with the plastic cleat example as its impossible really not to walk on cleats at some time. How else do you get to your bike / get on and off your bike.

Well we all agree that its mountain biking and parts get dented / scratched etc. However it does raise a point to an extent.

Is an iPhone fit for purpose when the anodised back scratches so easily in your pocket and therefore nearly everyone uses a case that then hides the design that Apple have so say spent so much time on
Is car paint fit for purpose when it scratches so easily in normal day to day use and is so costly to get fixed.
Are plastic road cleats fit purpose when they wear out with only small amounts of walking around.
Even are the paint jobs that many mountain bikes have fit for purposes when they scratch and chip so easily and everyone knows mountain biking is a harsh environment.

When you think about it, it is amazing how many products are not actually designed to survive and keep looking good when they are just being used normally. I think we all agree that things wear out and there is a balance between cost, weight and durability but there does seem to be lots of products that look tatty very very quickly.

Bloody 3 yr old daughter is addicted to the advert already and she only saw it for the first time yesterday. Constantly “daddy can I see the penguin again”. To be fair she has always loved penguins.

Went past a Costa Coffee yesterday with a bloody Christmas tree up. Why!!! I am not going to buy more coffee at christmas time. Fair enough to put up decorations near Christmas but not early November when you don’t even sell christmas products!!

Footflaps – Well yes you are correct it is not Dropboxes fault but the slow internet connection. I guess what I mean is that not many people will be on 100MBs broadband and generally upload speeds are way way slower than download. It is a shame no one does a function that reduces the size of the image before the upload so you just keep an emergency backup.

The other good thing about drop box is that it keep previous versions, so it does act as a kind of backup. If you deleted a photos folder you can get it back. iCloud I don’t believe does this but it is far far simpler at syncing photos from your iPhone.

I have been using Dropbox for a couple of years to keep my work mac and home macbook Pro synced. It has been fine for documents and files but nor really good for pictures and music as the upload speed is really slow and with photos especially you can easily have a 100 mb with a short video and holiday photos. This takes an age to upload and then sync. However what I now do is switch off the download of the photos folder to my work mac. That way the photos are synced and backed up.

Then the new version of icloud came out and especially iCloud photo library I thought that might be the perfect solution and importantly it doesn’t download the full photo file to each device but just a thumbnail. The problem with iCloud and this is classic Apple is that there is no indicator on a file to show that it has been uploaded or any icon to show that iCloud is syncing. I need to be able to make sure that files have uploaded at the end of the day so that when I turn my work mac off I know I will be able to access the file on my Macbook at home. With iCloud as there is no indicator there is no way in knowing. This is classic Apple where they expect you to just keep all your machines running all of the time.

The other problem I have had with iCloud which to be fair might just need me to set it up better is that with 2 iPads and 2 iPhones at home everything starts syncing and using up the broadband but there is no way to see what a device is doing. Often the only way to be able to use the broadband is to go around switching off all the devices.

In a way it is the classical technology dilemma where phone cameras keep getting bigger and bigger and we all have lots more photos that we want to backup and access everywhere but broadband upload speeds are just not good enough.

So I know use iCloud photo to sync and backup my photos and video but still use drop box to handle all my work files.

It projects in banks are often similar with failure and massive overspend. Both banks and government have huge amounts of money to spend and fall back on and personally I think it is due to both having higher management/politicians that don’t want to know the nitty gritty and want to palm off responsibility to some external so called expert company. The management/politicians can never then be blamed as they can always state “Well we did hire professionals” It is the same with auditors, how many of the big firms totally screwed up on the financial crisis but are still in business and being used. It because higher management want someone else to take the blame.

With IT projects often politicians don’t understand that it is the IT systems that actually provides the service, not some promise they make. They think the computer system is just some easy admin service like air conditioning and forget that it is the key component in offering and running a department or service.

Personally I think there is no excuse now for so many failed IT projects in government as so many have happened that the civil service should have sorted itself out and have better ways of doing things. Its not like the systems they are developing are cutting edge. Some like the NHS are very complicated but thats because they are so behind with the times and are going from nothing to trying to sprint with no other systems in between. They really need a 10 to 20 yr plan on how to bring the NHS upto the IT standards of big business and just admit that it will take and long time and money and that they need to do it in increments. Thats how every other business has done it. You can’t go from nothing to sprinting in one go. Just look at Apple with its maps, bloody awful and still no where near as detailed or as good as Google. Even the might of Apple have learned you have to do it in increments and slowly.

I went with Coop a few years back as like you all the others wanted face to face meetings and all I wanted to do was crack on and open the account and not wait weeks and weeks to meet someone. The only problem I have had with coop is their website is a bit poor.

Look for one that is specifically for a carbon fork. Should do the trick.

Ribble

In my old job as an IT manager, many technical people used to turn down the chance for promotion as they loved to write programmes and do actually coal face work. I always really respected them for that and so did the other manager. It was never a problem. Just make it clear that you are really pleased to have been considered but you really enjoy your job and the technical aspects and you don’t wan to lose that.

We have tried Facebook competitions in the past and they have not been very successful. At the end of the day you need to bring people to your Facebook page and unless you are very lucky and your page just happens to start trending then it is very hard to get followers. What we have found is that you need to use normal / old methods of attaching people outside of social media. Once you have the interest you can then get them to your Facebook page so you can collect more information from them and have a long term link to them.

So for instance if they saw you are an exhibition or on a advent then they would follow that through to your Facebook page and hopefully they would like your page or enter your competition. Social media does not in itself being people to your page. Of course if you start trending or when you get a large number of followers then social media does start working as a way of advertising and spreading the word.

Be very careful of Facebook adverts as we found they did nothing. A lot of people are very dubious as to how many people actually click on Facebook adverts. There are also a lot of companies promising you X number of likes for say £100 but in reality them are just paying for people in say China with 100’s of Facebook accounts to follow you. None of them will be real customers or interested parries. We know this from experience when our likes went up by 100 in the space of 2 minutes just as we were getting to a deadline for a campaign we paid for. When looking at the followers they were all completely different demographics to our buyers and all from far flung places.

I think you would be better off advertising through say leaflets, exhibitions, old style methods and then connecting/talking to your potential customers through Facebook.