Craig Sawyers

Who would've thought that the Chihuahua was descended from the grey wolf (as are all dogs). Woof.

^That, Jose, is a serious bike. How's this for bike madness

Not for much longer. The production company received £15m a year from the BBC, but they wanted £25m for the 2017 series. The BBC were not prepared to pay that much, so Channel 4 (a commercial channel with advert breaks) will have the show next year. Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry and the others have not confirmed that they will make the move - so it looks as if the ratings will take a pasting. This is kind of breaking news. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-37349837 .

Radiohead met when they were at Abingdon School in 1985, three miles from where I live. This is a public school, which in the UK is actually a private school for which you pay typically £6k to £12k per term, three terms per year. http://www.abingdon.org.uk/fees . It is a school for children of parents with very large incomes.

Happy birthday!

Seems like I'm just catching up. Gene Wilder - jeeze. I guess that is the problem with film - the younger self is recorded for all time, as the actor gets older. That must be one of the hardest things, to see films of yourself as a young person when you are old. So sad he went from Alzheimers. And so many great movies - Blazing Saddles particularly sticks in my mind. The clip of Young Frankenstein also has the incredible and long RIP Marty Feldman (1934 to 1982), a genius of comic writing and timing.

Can't tell you have relieved that makes me

Dunno if you can get this in the USofA, but the BBC has a series called "The Great British Bakeoff", and this week is Bread Week http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07v324h

WTF? It looks like an April Fool joke, except it ain't April. Here's an extract from their sales pitch - how about this for a USP: " You'll find it is designed to fit seamlessly into the outdated headphone connector, transforming last year's phone into a modern masterpiece"

The home page - wow. Average seems to be UKP500 per smoke.

Damn. This thread has reminded me how much I like a fine, but occasional cigar. I've bought a few over the years to enjoy with my son when he visits, from here https://www.havanahouse.co.uk/havana-house-oxford/ . This Christmas they are spending with us, so I'll buy a good selection later in the Autumn to enjoy with my lad (in the garden shed, accompanied by fine whiskey). We had some totally miserable ones in February in Dublin from an outfit that knew diddly squat about anything to do with storing cigars. Acrid horrible monstrosities, which should have been spectacular had they been stored and treated correctly.

Now that is an interesting question. Used to be via ickStream, but you can now directly link to Tidal. I followed the instructions here https://support.tidal.com/hc/en-us/articles/201871191-Squeezebox . After faffing around registering this, that and the other I can either access Tidal via ickStream, or directly. Basically I have no real idea what the ins and outs are - I just followed the recipe. All of this working under iPeng http://penguinlovesmusic.de/ because that gives me an intuitive and easy to use interface to the NAS, to the Transporter, and Tidal. I've also got the TV connected to the Transporter via optical, and a CD transport via SPDIF. I fiddled around with external DAC's connected to the Transporter, but just ended up using the inboard DAC, because it is a bit good - even fed via Jung Superregulators. Getting it all working is a bit of a fight first time. There are people on forums (Stereonet) who haven't managed to get a Transporter working satisfactorily - like I said, nothing like plug and play!

I have an arcane high end streamer system based on a Logitech Transporter. To make that work seamlessly takes a bit of work. PC needs to run Logitech Media Server for the Transporter to work. Networking via router - so PC, Transporter and NAS drive (with CD collection ripped using dBPoweramp) all connect to router. And because the interface to the Transporter is naff you use an Apple Tablet running iPeng - which connects to the router wirelessly. iPeng is an Apple-only app - so should also work with an iPhone. I also use Tidal HiFi, and getting that to work with the rest of the system is in itself arcane. And it occasionally forgets somehow, so you have to delete Tidal and reload. Pain in the ass, it most definitely not a plug and play - but sounds stunning when it gets its shit together.

Already tried a selection of shoes, and anything resembling a tread or resilience in the sole makes it essentially impossible to insert the other foot on the fly. Wish I hadn't tossed my old hard soled cleated shoes. Also, the price of new cleatless pedals and shoes (as above) is only UKP30 more than a pair of Samba. Phew - fit a new rim and spokes - that sounds like a brave and expensive option; I guess it would need a truing jig too. I suspect that if I was going that way I'd probably just go for new wheels, or a junker bike to scavenge parts. The brakes would cope with 700c though - there is plenty of travel on the (Weinman) brake shoe slots to cope with 4mm more. Oddly I have not have to spread the stays. The 5 speed cluster had additional spacers that I removed to fit the 6 speed, still with sufficient clearance for the small sprocket.

Thanks for the input guys. The place for these things in the UK is Evans (or Wiggle). I've got a pair of A530 pedals and a pair of SH-M065 shoes in my basket.

After 20 years of not riding, I fixed up my 40 year old Claud Butler Sovereign a couple of weeks ago. Of course bike technology has undergone at least one and possibly two revolutions since I bought mine. Reynolds 531 tubing and forks, 27 x 1-1/8 wheels, Campognolo changers and downtube shifters. Stonglight crank set with 52/36. At some point I had replaced the rear 5 speed wide ratio rear gears with a close ratio 6 speed. All the grease was like tar (the balls were even stuck together!), so it was a complete strip down and very careful clean, replacement of all balls with grade 10 and relubed with some fancy teflon-loaded grease. New chain - Shimano with some sort of useless quick link which I ditched and just used a chain tool. Replaced the grippy but heavy tyres with a pair of lightweight NOS Continental UltraSport ones from eBay (NOS because of the now obsolete wheel size). Even buckled down to learning how to true wheels, since mine had take a bit of a battering on UK roads when I was still riding. Weighs in at 11kg all up. It is what now classifies as a "retro bike". Anyway - it uses pedals with clips and straps, and I used to have a pair of bike shoes with the correct old-fashioned cleats. But I seem to have thrown them out at some stage. So it looks like the next thing that is needed to effectively get the thing on the road (apart from shaking out rebuild gremlins around the close) is some clipless pedal and new bike shoes/cleats. Any recommendations that won't break the bank would be most welcome. I'm kind of working up to the inevitability of falling off at some point; I still recall how much that hurts.

And silence came the stern reply

That brought me to tears.

Alastair Reynolds worked at the European Space Agency, and wrote novels in his spare time. Once they began to sell big time, he resigned and started as a full time author. Love his stuff - as a hard scientist, his novels reflect that.

That was my introduction to his work, Stretch. A great novel. My other favourite is Greg Bear. Particularly some of his astonishing earlier work like Blood Music and Infinity Concerto. He's gone off the boil a bit, more recently.

Odd factoid - there are more tornadoes in the UK, per land area, than in any other country in the world. Although they are a whole lot weaker than the devastating variety in the US, they nevertheless cause a lot of damage on an occasional basis - like when they touch down in a city. Tornado damage in Birmingham UK in 2005

Working my way through Iain M Banks' back catalogue. Hell of an author in the space opera genre. Also writes non-scifi under the same name without the "M", none of which I've yet to read.